The Collected Poems 



OF 



^yilfred Campbell 




> > 



New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1905, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

DEC 12 1905 

Copyritfht Entry 
CLASS CX XXc. No. 



^^H 



New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 80 Wabash Avenue 
Toronto: 27 Richmond Street, W. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 




PREFACE 

The verse in this collection is all, not dramatic in 
form, whiph the author cares to preserve, and much 
of it is selected from the several volumes which he 
has published. 

There is, however, a very large portion of it new 
verse, either now published for the first time or which 
has seen the light only in some of the magazines of 
Britain and America. Much of the verse included 
has been published in The Atlantic Monthly, The Cen- 
tury, Harper'' s, Scrihner's, The London Spectator and 
other periodicals prominent in the English-speaking 
world. 

The poetical tragedies and dramas, "Mordred," 
"Hildebrand," ^'TheBrockenfiend," '^Eobespierre," 
"Daulac," "Morning," "Sanio" and the "Admiral's 
Daughter," will, the most of them, be included in a 
companion volume to be published later. Mean- 
while, this volume of lyrical verse is respectfully 
presented to the British and American public. 

New Edinburgh, Ottawa, November, 1905. 



INTRODUCTION 

Simplicity and directness are essential to the 
highest class of verse. In the judgment of poetry 
this principle must never be lost sight of. 

Goethe, perhaps the greatest literary mind since 
Shakespeare, is noted for his simplicity and direct- 
ness of manner. The effort to dwarf the writing of 
verse into an obscui'e cult, will fail so long as the 
people keep themselves familiar with the verse of 
the great poets of the past — whose work is true and 
beautiful because of its very character of direct, sim- 
ple naturalness. 

It may be difficult to explain to the layman the 
conditions which produce poetry but no person of 
a poetical temperament (and I believe that the greater 
mass of readers have such an inclination) can fail to 
appreciate a true poem. The failure to appreciate 
verse to-day is not owing so much to the inability of 
the public to recognize a poem, as to the attempt of 
certain critics to force upon the public as poetry, 
what is after all at the most only clever verse. 
The result is a sort of confusion in the mind of the 
ordinary reader who in the past was accustomed to 
judge by his own feelings. 

There is no doubt that poetry is first and last a 
high emotion. It is a sort of instrument which thrills 
the soul not only by what it reveals but by what it 



vi INTRODUCTION 

suggests. For this reason, a mere esthetic word-pic- 
tuie, no matter how carefully wrought, is not in the 
true sense poetry. 

It may emulate the careful photograph which seem- 
ingly loses nothing, yet fails to catch the one neces- 
sary insight which the painter who is a genius puts 
into his picture — that light that never was on sea or 
land, yet which all men see sometime or other in 
what the average world may call the dull and com- 
mon j)lace. There may be a danger, however, that a 
cult to see beauty in the commonplace will grow from 
the affectation to seem artistic and poetical. After 
all, the beauty we see in a special verse is in our- 
selves. There is the universal beauty which all see. 
That is the real, the lasting beauty. There is the 
greatness of life as life, the greatness inherent in 
noble actions and noble aims ; the pathos of a great 
Hove, a great self-denial or a great despair. There is 
the greatness of a struggle for a lost cause (how man- 
kind loves a lost cause). There is a majesty of life 
and death ; the majesty of ocean and shore and lofty 
hills. All of this is universal, and of this poetry is 
made. 

After all, the real root of all poetry from Shakes- 
peare to the latest singer is in the human heart. The 
mind is cold and critical. It plans and plots. It 
examines and sifts. Man with the mind alone were 
but a mean creature. Man the planner and plotter, 
the schemer and builder, may move mountains and 
yet be little better than the ape. It is man the 
hoper, man the dreamer, the eternal child of delight 
and despair whose ideals and desires are ever a life- 



INTRODUCTION vii 

time ahead of his greatest accomplishinents, who is 
the hero of nature and the darling of the ages. Be- 
cause of this, true poetry will always be to him a 
language, speaking to him from the highest levels of 
his being and a sort of translation from a more divine 
tongue emanating from the mystery and will of God. 

Poetry may have many messages ; but above all 
stands the eternal appeal from life and nature. All 
descriptions of water and land, sky and earth, summer 
and winter, are not necessarily poetry, any more than 
are all verses on life and death and love and de- 
spair. But the greatest poetry is that dealing with 
the human soul. The highest class of poetry, that 
of Shakespeare, that of the Old Testament, of Goethe, 
is that dealing with the eternal tragedy of life in the 
universe. The eternal theme of man is man. But 
all poetry may not stand on this high level. There 
are lesser degrees of the divine emotion, and much 
that is true, beautiful and majestic in the verse of the 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 

In the work of the great nature poets, the very 
strength and beauty of the verse is owing to the fact 
that the thought and imagination dwell upon the 
human, and nature as affecting the human, rather 
than upon the mere objective nature, as solely an 
esthetic aspect. The greatness of such verse consists 
in its lofty emotion, whereby it con^^eys to the soul 
an impressive sense of the majesty of life and death. 
It is not merely the work of the literary artist, 
who paints in words on a sort of literary canvas ; 
but whether the idea be death or a season, the mood 
is a creation of a soul strongly imbued with a feeling 



viii INTRODUCTION 

of the sublimity of life. In such verse one is lifted 
out of the common into an atmosphere of spiritual 
exaltation, such as only true poetry has the power to 
create. 

In dealing with a volume of verse it is perfectly 
right that the reader should be guided only by the 
highest standards in the selection or rejection of 
poetry as such. To find the true poetry needs no 
subtle insight into the intricacies of language and 
the laws of prosody. The soul of the man of pure 
sentiment and cultured mind is at once attracted to 
true poetry through those very impressive qualities 
which mark it out from the body of mere rhyme or 
unrhymed effusions and literary exercises with which, 
even in the volumes of our noblest poets, it is some- 
times mingled. 



CONTENTS 



A Dedication - 

Elemental and Human Verse — 

Poetry 

My Library 

Lines on a Skeleton 

The Soul's Bath - 

The Discoverers 

The Hills and the Sea 

The Vanguard 

Commemoration Ode 

The Dreamers 

The Lyre Degenerate 

Work 

The Blind Caravan 

Ode to the Laurentian Hills 

The Art Divine 

Day and Night 

My Creed - 

Responsibility 

Sleep 

Sleep 

The Question 

The House of Dreams 

Soul 

Life-Spent - 

A Present-Day Creed 

Truth 

The Singer 

ix 



FAQB 

15 



19 
21 
21 
23 
24 
29 
30 
35 
39 
42 
45 
46 
48 
49 
50 
60 
51 
51 
52 
53 
57 
58 
64 
65 
65 
66 



X CONTENTS 






Elemental and Human Verse — Continued. 




PAOB 


The Heart of Song 


'« 


67 


Genius 


- 


_ 


68 


The Last Prayer - 


- 


• 


70 


Unabsolved - 


• <• 


. 


72 


Return No More ! - 


• • 


. 


80 


The Lyre of the Gods 


• 


« 


81 


The Soul's House - 


m 


. 


83 


Orpheus - . . 


- 


. 


85 


Glen Eila - 


. • 


. 


86 


The Betrayed Singer 


- 


- 


89 


Nature Verse — 






Nature - - - . . 




93 


The Home of Song 






93 


Higher Kinship 






95 


Wind ... 






96 


Earth 






98 


Snow ... 






99 


Snowfall 






- 101 


The Dryad's House 






- 101 


August - . . . 






- 103 


Cape Eternity 






■ 103 


The Mystery 






- 104 


Spring .... 






- 105 


In the Spring Fields 






- 108 


Renewal - - . . 






- 108 


The Dryad 






- 109 


A Northern River 






-, 112 


The Humming Bee 






- 114 


A Wood Lyric 






- 116 


An August Reverie 






- 117 


To the Ottawa 






- 120 


Glory of the Dying Day . 






- 120 


Walls of Green ... 






- 122 


Ode to Sileace ... 






- 123 


Ode to Thunder Cape 






- 125 



CONTENTS 



XI 



Nature Verse — Gonlinutd. 

To the Rideau River 

The Wind-Dancer 

Winter 

The Spring-Spirit - 

In the Strength of the Trees 

Autumn 

The Journey 

The Message of Night 

The Dream Divine 

Titan 

Morning 

The Earth-Spirit - 

Rododactulos 

The End of the Furrow - 

The Pageantry of Death - 

An October Evening 

To the Blackberry 

Before the Dawn - 

A Winter's Night - 

Dawn in the June Woods - 

September in the Laurentian Hills 

Indian Summer 

Song 

Autumn Leaves 



PAQB 

127 
129 
130 
132 
133 
134 
136 
137 
138 
139 
142 
142 
143 
143 
144 
146 
147 
149 
149 
150 
151 
152 
152 
153 



Elegiac and Memorial Verse — 

Victoria 
The Dead Poet 
Summer Death 
Sebastian Cabot 
Bereavement of the Fields 
Nicholas Flood Davin 
Henry A. Harper - 
The Dead Leader - 
Alexander Lumsden 



157 
162 
165 
172 
176 
179 
181 
183 
185 



xii CONTENTS 




Poems of the Affections— pagb 


Beyond the Hills of Dream - - - - 189 


Love .... 


■ 


-192 


Afterglow - 






- 192 


Out of Pompeii 






- 193 


Harvest Slumber Song 






- 194 


' The Mother 






- 195 


On a Summer Shore 






- 199 


Belated 






- 200 


Departure - 






- 202 


Her Look 204 


Deamatic, Classical and Imaginative Verse — 


The Last Scene from " Mordied "... 207 


Pan the Fallen 


- 210 


Phaethon - 






- 212 


Sir Lancelot 






- 219 


The Wayfarer 






- 225 


Peniel 






- 230 


Cain 






. 236 


Lazarus 






- 238 


Ahmet 






. 241 


The Elf- Lover 






- 249 


The Were-Wolves - 






- 251 


The Vengeance of Saki 






- 254 


The Last Ride 






- 261 


The Violin 






- 265 


Songs from " Mordred " • 






. . -267 


Sonnets — 


Our Heritage 




- 273 


The Builders 






- 273 


The Higher Kinship 






- 274 


Nature the Benign 






- 274 


The Soul - 






- 275 


My Religion 






- 275 


Toleration - 






- 276 



CONTENTS 




xiii 


Sonnets — Continued. paob 


September ------ 


- 276 


Nature Truth - ... - 


- 277 


The Truth -..--- 


- 277 


Life's Inferno 




- 278 


Death .... 




- 278 


The Consolation of the Stars 




- 279 


True Insight 




- 279 


The House Divine - 




- 280 


" Not Unto Endless Dark " 




- 280 


The Wind's Royalty 




- 281 


Nature's Sincerity 




- 281 


The Soul's Cloister 




- 282 


Earth's Innocence 




- 282 


Love .... 




- 283 


Foundations 




- 283 


The Poet - - . . 




- 284 


The Politician 




- 284 


Sublimity - 




. 285 


The Patriot 




- 285 


Night 




- 286 


Job 




- 286 


On a Picture of Columbus 




- 287 


Shelley .... 


- 288 


The Sagas of Vaster Britain— 


Britain ....--■ 


■ 291 


Canada ... 






. 291 


To the Canadian Patriot - 






. 293 


To the United States 






. 294 


Responsibility 






. 295 


The Race - 






. 296 


The Answer 






. 296 


England 






. 297 


The World-Mother (Scotland) 






299 


The Lazarus of Empire 






. 303 


Show the Way, England - 


- 




. 305 



XIV 



CONTENTS 



The Sagas of Vaster Britain — Continued. 

The Children - - 

Briton to Briton : An Appeal 
Cafiada .... 
Victoria .... 
The Lament for the Chief - 
Mafeking .... 
Our Bit of " The Thin Red Line " 
Return of the Troops 
Crowning of Empire 

Lake Lyrics — 

Vapor and Blue 

The Children of the Foam 

How One Winter Came in the Lake Regi^ 

On the Shore 

The Winter Lakes 

A Lake Memory 

The Flight of the Gulls 

How Spring Came 

Lake Huron 

Sunset, Lake Huron 
Nama-Way-Qua-Donk — The Bay of Sturgeons 



PAOK 



• 


. 310 


- 


- 312 


. 


. 314 


- 


- 317 


(;■'' 


- 322 


. 


- 325 


-. 


- 329 


- 


- 331 


- 


- 333 


•• '■ 


- 341 


- 


- 342 


ion 


- 344 


• 


- 345 


k 


- 346 


. 


- 347 


• 


- 348 


- 


- 349 


. 


- 350 


- 


- 350 


IS • 


- 352 



H 2)et)ication 

In the struggling, darkened horde 
Of this world's wide moan. 

Dreamer of the golden reed. 
Thou must thrive alone. 

Too busy in its fevered marts. 

Too eager in its strife. 
Where all would teach, and few 
would leam. 

We lose the larger life. 

We pass the fields of magic by. 
To reach the favored place ; 

And sadly find our gods have gone 
With far averted face. 

Eager to clutch the golden "then," 
Or flee from out the fear. 

Too late we leam, too late, alas. 
We missed the gloried " here." 



^Elemental ant) Ibuman IDerse 



Points af Milfai) Campbell 

Poetry 

Earth^s dream of poetry will never die. 
It lingers while we linger, base or true— 
A part of all this being. Life may change, 
Old customs wither, creeds become as nought. 
Like autumn husks in rainwinds ; men may kill 
All memory of the greatness of the past. 
Kingdoms may melt, republics wane and die, 
New dreams arise and shake this Jaded world; 
But that rare spirit of song will breathe and live 
While beauty, sorrow, greatness hold for men 
A kinship with the eternal ; until all 
That earth holds noble wastes and fades away. 
Wrong cannot kill it. Man's material dream 
May scorn its uses, worship baser hope 
Of life's high purpose, build about the world 
A brazen rampart : through it all will come 
The iron moan of life's unresting sea ; 
And through its floors, as filtered blooms of dawn. 
Those flowers of dream will spring, eternal, sweety 
Speaking for God and man; the infinite myster}'- 
Will ever fold life round ; the mighty heart 
Of earth's humanity ceaseless throb and beat 
As round this globe the vasty deeps of sky, 
And round earth's shores the wide, encompassing sea. 
Outside this rind of hardened human strife 
There lies this mantle of mighty majesty. 
Thought's cunning cannot probe, its science plumb. 
Earth's schools of wisdom, in their darkness, spell 
The common runes of knowledge; but there lies 
2 19 



'20 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

A greatness, vast, behind this taper gleam, 

That stands for somewhat lore hath never weighed 

In all its ponderings of thought-pulsing brain. 

Shakespeare, the Mighty, touched it as he passed. 

The Man in Uz did feel it, shook the folds 

Of some great garment's hem of One who passed 

The vasty gates of Orion at one stride. 

All earth's high souls have felt it in their time, 

Have risen to this mighty deep in thought. 

Or worshipped in the blackness and the gleam. 

Dream not because life's taper flame grows dim, 

Man's soul grows wasted gazing on dull gold. 

His spirit shrunk with canker of life's ill. 

That earth's great nights will darken their splendors 

down. 
Her dawns will fail to rise, this mighty world 
Will cease to roll its vast appointed way ; 
And beautv and love, and all that man holds sweet 
For youth and age, the effort glad, the joy. 
The memory of old greatness gone before. 
Not hold their magic 'neath the Almighty Will. 

Yea, 'tis eternal as the wave, the sky. 
Changing forever, never wholly passing, 
A part of all this dream that will not die. 
It lives forever. Years may fade and pass. 
Youth's dream decline to age and death's decay, 
Ills and sharp griefs, despairs and agonies come: 
While earth remains her spirit will not fail. 
That greatness back of all will still console, 
Man's life will still be sweet, its purpose glad, 
The morn will still be morning, and the night 
Star splendors arched above the eternal peace, 
The eternal yearning and the eternal dream. 



II 



LINES ON A SKELETON 21 

My Library 

You ask me where I get these thoughts. 

These dreams melodious, mystical, 
I read them in God's book of lore. 

Wide open, splendid, by my door. 

Its pages are the magic sky, 
* The wonder of the iron earth, 
And all those dreams that time let fly 
Since being's earliest birth. 

I read them in those curious runes, 

Those tragedies of love and strife. 
That chart of memory-haunted dunes. 

That demon angel-book that man calls life. 



Lines on a Skeleton 

This was the mightiest house that God e'er made. 
This roofless mansion of the incorruptible. 
These joists and bastions once bore walls as fair 
As Solomon's palace of white ivory. 
Here majesty and love and beauty dwelt, 
Sliakespeare's wit from these lorn walls looked down, 
Sadness like the autumn made it bare. 
Passion like a tempest shook its base. 
And joy filled all its halls with ecstasy. 

This was the home wherein all dreams of earth 

And air and ocean, all supreme delights. 

Made mirth and madness : wisdom pored alone ; 

And power dominion held: and splendid hope: 

And fancy like the delicate sunrise woke 

To burgeoning thought and form and melody. 



22 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Beneath its dome the agony of the Jew, 
The pride of Ctesar or the hate of Cain, 
The thought of Plato or the heart of Burns 
Once dwelt in some dim form of being's light. 

Within these walls of wondrous structure, dread. 
A magic lute of eliin melody 
Made music immortal, such as never came 
From out those ancient halls of Orphean song. 

Love dreamed of it, and like a joy it rose. 
Power shaped its firm foundations like the base 
Of mountain majesty: and o'er its towers 
Truth from fair windows made his light look down. 

But came a weird and evil demon host, 
Besieged its walls, destroyed its marvellous front; 
Shuttered its casements, dismantled all its dream, 
And hurled it down from out its sunward height; 
And now it lies bereft of all its joy 
And pride and power and godlike majesty; 
The sport of elements and hideous mimes, 
That blench its corridors, desecrate its rooms, 
Where once dwelt love and beauty, joy and hope, 
ISTow tenantless: save for the incurious wind. 
And ghostlike rains that beat its bastions bare. 
And evil things that creep its chambers through. 

But whither thence is fled that tenant rare, 
That weird indweller of this wasted house? 
Back from the petalled bloom withdraws the dew. 
The melody from the shell, the day from heaven, 
To build afar earth's resurrection morn. 



THE SOULS BATH 23 



And so, Love trusts, in some diviner air 
The lord of this lorn mansion dwells in light 
Of vaster beauty, vaster scope and dream; 
Where weariness and gladness satiate not, 
Where power and splendid being know no ruin. 
And evil greeds and envyings work no wrong. 



The Soul's Bath 

At even when the roseate deeps 

Of daylight dim from heaven's bars. 

The soul her earth-worn garment slips. 
And naked stands beneath the stars; 

And there unto that river vast. 

That mighty tide of night, whose girth 
With splendid planets, brimming past, 

Doth wash the ancient rim of earth. 

She comes and plunges in; and laves 
Her weariness in that vast tide. 

That life-renewing deep, whose waves 
Are wide as night is wide. 

Then from the pure translucent flow 
Of that unplumbed, invigorate sea. 

Godlike in truth's white spirit-glow 
She stands unshamed and free. 



24 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



The Discoverers 

This poem is dedicated to the memory of all those great soula 
who, in days gone by, in the bold spirit of discovery ventured out 
on the then trackless seaa of the unknown west, in quest of this 
New World which their undaunted zeal and enterprise have won 
for us as a boon to the race and a blessing to mankind. 

They feared no unknown, saw no horizon dark, 

Counted no danger; dreamed all seas their road 

To possible futures : struck no craven sail 

For sloth or indolent cowardice ; steered their keels 

O'er crests of heaving ocean, leagues of brine, 

AVhile Hope firm kept the tiller, Faith, in dreams, 

Saw coasts of gleaming continents looming large 

Beyond the ultimate of the sea's far rim. 

Thus was it ever. Souls too great for sloth 

And impotent ease, goaded by inward pain 

Of some divine, great yearning restlessness ; 

Which would not sit at home on servile shores 

And take the good their fathers wrought in days 

Long-ancient time-ward, — reap what others sowed; 

But, nobler, sought to win a world their own, 

Not conquered by others, but a virgin shore, 

AVhere men might build the future; rear new realms 

Of human effort; forgetful of the past, 

And all its ill and failure; raising anew 

The godlike dreams of genius, knowing only 

Immortal possibility of man 

To grow to larger vastness, holier dreams. 

Made certain in straight laws of human life 

And national vision ; lived in lofty lives 

Of manhood strong and noblest womanhood. 

So thus it was, and is, and e'er will be ! 
The ill we do we leave behind us as 



THE DISCOVERERS 25 

The phantom cloak of yesterday's sleep, thrown oS 
At newer waking to life's splendid dawn. 
So dreamed they, eager, in those olden days, 
Saw visions in the future, round the west 
Of Europe's fading sunsets; held a hope 
Of some new paradise for poor men's cure 
From despotisms of old dynasties 
And cruel iron creeds of warped despairs. 
Hungering for light and truth and righteousness, 
So launched they, setting sail toward sunset verge 
Of lonely, inhospitable Ocean hurling back 
From his grey mane sad wrecks of their desires. 

We know their story, read the truth where they 
Knew only in man's hope and loftier soul 
Which strove and dared and greatly overcame, 
Conquering scorn of man and veils of doubt. 
Wresting from nature half her secret, cruel, 
"Wherewith she darkens doTSTi in glooms apart 
The mystery of this planet, where we sleep 
And wake and toil, redeeming high resolves, 
Chaining the future to the present act. 

We ponder on their daring, their vast hope. 
That compassed all a planet in its dream. 
We marvel at that stern defiance, where 
A single man, in a degenerate age, 
Would throw the gauntlet down against a world, 
Def}4ng narrow custom, small beliefs. 
Strangled in lies; and staking all on one 
Swift certainty of reason, based on thought. 
Which read from nature, not from childish tomes 
Of baseless superstitions, and dared all, 
Left the kind land behind, and ventured out 
On what men deemed a hideous demon waste. 



26 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

An endless vortex, wherein poor souls caught 
Were swept to vastness, gulfed and swallowed down. 
We wonder at this greatness, yet we know 
That thus forever shall human greatness be, 
Man's only truth in life to stand alone; 
Invincible power the spirit's solitude. 

Beneath the sky, that marvel of earth's night. 

That vast reproof of all our littleness, 

That shining rebuke to our unfaithfulness. 

That scorner of our despairs; 'neath its dim tent 

Of fold on fold of fleecy infinities; 

That soul of man is but a puny thing, 

A fork-like snake in its own petty fires. 

Which doth not rise to some high eminence 

Of human thought and vast forgetfulness 

Of all this common ill and common deed, 

And loom to somewhat of that stature, great. 

That God did dream us! So those mighty souls. 

Watching His stars, read nightly fixed and sure, 

A certainty ; while every yeasty wave, 

A monster mountain, roared to gulf them down. 

We are a part of that great dream they dreamed. 
We know wherein they failed, as all life fails. 
We know the greatness they could never dream. 
The certainty behind that sunset veil. 
Which lured them on beyond its misty verge; 
And we are witness that their hope was sure, 
And true and wise and voice of God to men. 
We are the witnesses that they were right. 
And all the small tind common minds were wrong, 
The scorners of their faith, the laughers-down 
Of their sublime enthusiasms ; like as all 
Dim asres of this world have heard and seen. 



THE DISCOVERERS 27 

Yea, we are witnesses that they who hoped, 

And greatly planned, and greatly dreamed and dared, 

Were greater and more godlike, truer souls 

And wiser in their day than those who sat 

With shaking head and shallow platitude, 

Made foolish vulgar prophecy of defeat; 

Yea, we are witnesses that one true man 

With faith in nature, his own heart and brain, 

And daring, fearless, caring nought for aught, 

Save his own trust in some high godlike vision, 

Is greater far than all a world of men 

Who are but shadows of a worn-out age 

Which they have long outlived; as rotten trunks 

Do mark the place where some huge oak went down. 

We are the dream which they did dream ; but we, 

If we are great as they were, likewise know 

That man is ever onward, outward bound 

To some far port of his own soul's desire, 

Knowing the present ever incomplete. 

In love's reflection of the heart's high goal. 

And now no more this western world is deemed 

A home for liberty and hope's desire. 

Men learn in wisdom, as the 3fears glide on. 

And life is ever the same in east or west. 

And human nature, lost in its own toils 

Of earthly strivings, loses that gold thread 

Of life's sincerity, repeating o'er again 

The grim despotic tyrannies of old, 

On newer shores to freedom dedicate 

By loftier souls who won this world in vain. 

So is it ever. Human grief and ill 

And human tyranny know no special strand. 



28 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

All lands alike to tyrants are a spoil, 

From ills of race no continent is immune. 

Men cannot flee old evils though they cross 

Whole oceans of surges beating in between. 

We bear with us the despot in our blood: 

It is the race that speaks forever in 

Our strivings and our weakness: Nero flames 

A newer Eome in each new tyranny 

Which wakens a western world to deeds of blood. 

And we, who have no continents new to find, 
No shadowed planet darkening back our dream, 
Who know the new world but the old world new: 
The same old evil and the same old gleam 
In other guise; but 'neath the same snakehead, 
Lifting ill eyes to choke our visions down 
In monster folds of human servitude :- — 
We, too, as they, are earth's discoverers. 
We likewise can be fixed in our regard, 
We likewise can be brave, sincere and true, 
Dreaming far peaks of greatness on ahead, 
If we but strive and beat our weakness down; 
Setting our sails, invincible, for those ports 
Beyond the common, sheltered shoals of self; 
Cleaving with daring keel those open seas 
Of larger life, those heaving floors of hope; 
Marking our course by those fixed stars alone, 
Forever steadfast, witnesses of Gorl, 
Pointing to continents vast of holier dream. 



THE HILLS AND THE SEA 29 



The Hills and the Sea 

Give me the hills and wide water, 

Give me the heights and the sea; 
And take all else, 'tis living 

And heaven enough for me. 
For my fathers of old they were hillsmen. 

My sires they were sons of the sea. 

Give me the uplands of purple. 

The sweep of the vast world's rim. 
Where the sun dips down, of the dawnings 

Over the earth's edge swim; 
With the days that are dead, and the old earth-tales, 

Human, and haunting, and grim. 

Give me where the great surfs landward 

Break on the iron-rimmed shore, 
Where Winter and Spring are eternal. 

And the miles of sea-sand their floor; 
Where Wind and Vastness, forever. 

Walk by the red dawn's door. 

Back from this grime of the present. 

This slavery worse than all death. 
Let me stand out alone on the highlands, 

Where there's life in the brave wind's breath ; 
Where the one wise word and the strong word 

Is the word that the great hush saith. 



30 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



The Vanguard 

(To the Twentieth Century) 

Out of the grey light. 
Into the daylight, 
"We are His battlemen 

Riding along; 
Century-laden, 
To some dim aidenn, 
Hope in our vanguard. 

Courage, our song. 
** Check up the curb, there !" 
" Firm in the stirrup, there !" 
" Steady ! men, steady !" 
" Eiding along !" 

Out of the grim light, 
Into the dim light. 
Under the morning airs, 

Wliere the pale stars 
Fade with the dying 
Murk of night flying. 
Into the smoke-mists. 

Over earth's bars — 
"Where the dim sorrows 
Of long-dead to-morrows 
Sink into ashes, 

Crumble to night — 
Cheerfully, gravely, 
Manfully, bravely. 
Ride we, ride we, 

Into His light. 



THE VANGUARD 31 

There was an Inn, we 
Eang to begin, we 
Thundered its rafters 

With generous song — 
There a low mound, we 
Left a brave comrade. 
Worn of the journey. 

Riding along. 
There was a battle fought. 
Fiercely the blades rang. 
Horseman and charger 

Grappled the foe — 
Hard spent and hard hit. 
Teeth clenched and foaming bit. 
Out of the battle-smoke, 

Forward we go. 

Bravely faced, bravely won, 
Nobly died, nobly done. 
Lifting the firm face. 

Riding along: 
Always to hillward, 
Truth and God-will ward, 
Never toward darkness, 

Never toward wrong; 
Not dumb cattle ! men. 
We are God's battlemen. 
Waging His fierce fights 

Under the night. 
Under the smoke-mists. 
Through the dim centuries. 
Ride we, ride we. 

Into His light. 

Hold up the head, there ! 
Quicker the tread, there! 



32 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Eyes on the mountain heights! 

Lift the old song! 
" Bravely the right goes, 
" Down with the dread foes, 
" Evil and sorrow, 

" Hate and old wrong ! 
" Doubt but the battle-smoke, 
" Dusk but the morning's cloak, 
" Care and despairing but 

" Dreams of the night ; 
" Eoll the grey mists up ! 
*' Drain deep the dawn-cup I 
" Eide we, ride we, 

"Into His light!" 

Old men and young men. 
Cheering the faint ones. 
Bearing the weak ones. 

Chiding the strong; 
Over the dead past, 
Ice-cold, furnace-blast, 

Eiding along; 
We are His valiant hearts. 
Wending His Journey dread. 
Eyes to the hills ahead. 

Hearken our song: — 
" Watch for His dawning ! mark, 
" Sorrow but the shrivelled bark, 
" Love the white kernel sap ; 

" Hatred and wrong, 
" But the fierce, sudden hail, 
*^ Battling our iron mail, 

"Eiding along," 

Yea, as we thunder, we 
Know earth's old wonder, we 



THE VANGUARD S3 

Feel all about us 

Her splendor and tears; 
Her might and her glory, 
Her centuried story, 
Her weird, blind caravan 

Down the dead years. 
Her grief and her wisdom, 
Her heart-breaks and yearning, 
Her legends of iron-eaten. 

Blood-crusted wars : — 
Her loves and despairings. 
Wrecks of old dynasties. 
Barbarous; splendid and 

Old as the stars : — 
They who look down on us. 
Cold in their far-light. 
Orient, mystical. 

Under the night; 
Weird in their silence. 
Grim, fixed witnesses. 
Long, of earth's struggles, 
Her great grim graveyards. 

Of passion and might. 

But under we thunder. 
Charge, battle, and blunder. 
Out of the night-mists, 

Unto the day. 
Led by an impulse, 
A fierce joy and heart-hope. 
Older and stronger 
And greater than they. 
Sound the clear bugle, there ! 
Wide, let the summons blare! 
Challenge the centuries, 

Eearless of wrong! 



34 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Bury that dead face! 
Strong heart, fill his place I 
Tenderly, manfully, 

Eiding along! 
Eyes to the right, ahead! 
Grim be the way we tread, 
Sound down the silence, murk, 

Hope's golden horn! 
Sweet, sweet! silver clear! 
Challenging despair and fear ; 
Though life be at its neap, 
Death is but the morning sleep. 

Ere day be born. 

Close up amain, there! 
Curb on that rein, there! 
Eyes hillward and Godward, 

Forging ahead ! 
Down the dread journey, 
Flashing the stern eye. 
Out on dim iron-peaks 

Lifetimes ahead ! 
Searching the night-line, 
Murk's fading white line, 
For the dawn's message. 

For the day's red; 
Sinking old sorrows 
In nobler to-morrows, 
Einging the levin 

With earth's battle-song; 
Hugging the after 
Tears of old laughter, 
Hopeward and Godwarfl, 

Eiding along. 



% 



COMMEMORATION ODE 35 

Eyes to the front, there! 
Iron 'gainst the brunt, there! 
Jarring the battle-shock, 

Under the night; 
From earth's weird wonder. 
We thunder, we thunder. 
Out from the centuries' 

Battle and blight; 
Clear, clear, our biigles, clear. 
Challenging despair and fear, 
Eide we, ride we. 

Into His light. 



Commemoration Ode 

(Cambridge, June, 1905) 

Brothers in action, aspiration, aim, 
Co-heritors of that old breed, old blood. 
That ancient speech, that ancient faith and song ;- 
Once more we stand in these memorial halls. 
And meet in kind communion, as of yore 
Those sun-filled hours of youth's Hyperion morn, 
When life's great future blinded eager eyes. 
And ways of vague achievement lay before, 
With golden roadways leading on to fame 
Or other portals of Hope's azure vision 
Beyond the mists of aspiration's dream. 

Once more we meet here with our tithe of lore. 
Or dearly earned experience of this world. 
And all its mystery of blinded ways ; — 
And here we face the future ; nearer now 
3 



36 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

That last dread culmination of our days, 
That solemn gate of earth's departing scene, 
Where love and patience lay their burdens down. 
Here at life's mid-day mile-stone do we stand, 
Knowing our vision greater than our act, 
Our possibility vaster than our dream. 

Greater than all earth's woven creeds is that 
Eternal possibility of man 
To rise to nobler futures, loftier peaks 
Of golden sunrise visions, climbing on 
To those vast vistas of the ideal man. 

Learning is nature's kindred spirit. She 
Holds up the torch to reason, seeking ever 
That holy, immortal, changeless face of Truth. 
Language may falter, palter, lose her old 
Plain utterance, simple, pure and undefiled ; — 
But upward still is upward, straight is straight, 
And narrow the way and hard the paths to God. 

Not all the weight of vast material power. 
The brazen frown, the iron hand of wealth, 
Can make the ill less evil ; or the good 
A part of evil. Still midway will stand 
That sword of Eden flaming in between. 
Whence man came naked, naked will return, 
Clothed only in the truth of heart and brain. 

There is no complex where the spirit rules. 
The truth is simple as the perfect curve 
Of elemental beauty. Life no lie, 
Till man did build a fence to shut out God, 
And hide with hideous tapestries the stars. 



COMMEMORATION ODE 37 

Those endless, gobelin questionings shut in 
Man's soul from the eternal. Out beyond, 
Where night and vasts anticipate the dawn. 
No muffled doubt goes groping, where those hosts. 
Immortal, radiant, wheel their mystic fires, 
Orion, and the ancient Pleiades, 

Think not because we lose the road, that we 
Are lost eternal. Still the road shines on. 
Through murky mists of this grim modern dream, 
These smokes, material, shrouding His vast plan. 
And still a child-face teaches beauty's truth; 
A wayside blossom still remains a flower; 
And love, and hate of evil rule the world. 
This shining roadway holds no cul-de-sac, 
Though close the gorges seem to hem us in. 
With human finality, reason's narrow bounds, 
Within these hopeless mountains of the mind. 

And often 'mid the anguish and turmoil 

Of all this fevered being, I have felt 

A sudden flame of some large knowledge, flashed. 

And then withdrawn from out my spirit's ken; 

As though God opened His vast doors of light 

And outward being. Then my soul hath felt 

Some mystic glimpse of far infinity. 

As though there flamed a world outside our world, 

Beyond this prison house of all our tears. 

This finite cell that we inhabit here. 

And in that sudden light it seemed as if 
This house of sadness, these grim narrow streets. 
This blinded search from shrivelled day to day. 
And all that past which memory intervenes, 



38 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

This hourly round of earth's experience. 

This opening up of vistas of life's days 

And months and years, had all been lived before, 

And this grim present but old dreams re-dreamed. 

So moves life's mystery, as though fold in fold. 

Of sense 'neath sense, like sleep which mantles dream, 

Man's gross heredity muffles in his soul 

Prom somewhat larger, mightier, some far vast, 

As mists material curtain out God's stars. 

For life is greater than its mightiest deeds. 
And we, than this environment, wherein we dwell. 
This mansion, vast, of failure, where the winds 
Of youth's far longings haunt these banquet halls 
Of deeds unfinished, broken pillars of faith. 
And ruined stairways leading to the stars. 

This, Brothers, is my message: Let us keep 
The olden faith in glad sincerity, 
Eemembering ever, simplicity is the truth; 
Eeligion reverence; wisdom but to keep 
Those dread eternal laws which guide the world. 

Forgetting not our duty to the race, 

From which our sires and our great-grandsires sprang; 

That mighty stock, that iron heredity, 

Uncompromising, stern, which planted deep 

The holy roots of that wide tree which bore 

This blossom of liberty which we pluck to-day. 

Which taught us, what we all too soon forget, 
No earthly generation stands alone, 
But is the link in some vast mystic chain 
Extending downward from the ancient days. 



THE DREAMERS 39 

Eemembering that allegiance which we owe 
The blood we bear, the tongue our fathers forged 
From out the rude and barbarous dreams of those 
Who gave us primal being. This our work, 
To build, to weld, replenish, and subdue. 

Not like blind force which treads this earth like iron, 
And makes the continents tremble; not by greed. 
Or grim political craft ; but by that power. 
That sad sincerity of the Perfect Man. 

Yea, this, my message ! Life is short and stern. 
And ours at best a feeble, cabined will. 
Our mind is finite : — But the soul of man, 
^^^lich hopes and trembles, suffers and aspires, 
Eebukes his pettier moments; its vast dreams 
Proclaim our origin high, our destiny great, 
And possibilities limitless like the sea. 



The Dreamers 

(A Parable.) 

They lingered on the middle heights 
Betwixt the brown earth and the heaven; 

They whispered, " We are not the night's, 
But pallid children of the even." 

They muttered, " We are not the day's. 
For the old struggle and endeavor. 

The rugged and unquiet ways, 

Are dead and driven past forever." 

They dreamed upon the cricket's tune, 

The winds that stirred the withered grasses; 



40 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

But never saw the blood-red moon, 
That lit the spectre mountain-passes. 

They sat and marked the brooklet steal 
In smoke-mist o'er its silvered surges: 

But marked not, with its peal on peal. 
The storm that swept the granite gorges. 

They dreamed the shimmer and the shade. 
And sought in pools for haunted faces : 

Nor heard again the cannonade 

In dreams from earth's old battle-places. 

They spake, " The ages all are dead, 
The strife, the struggle and the glory; 

We are the silences that wed 

Betwixt the story and the story. 

"We are the little winds that moan 

Between the woodlands and the meadows, 

We are the ghosted leaves, wind-blown 
Across the gust-light and the shadows." 

Then came a soul across those lands. 

Whose face was all one glad, rapt wonder ; 

And spake : " The skies are ribbed with bands 
Of fire, and heaven all racked with thunder. 

" Climb up and see the glory spread. 

High over cliff and 'scarpment yawning: 

The night is past, the dark is dead, 
Behold the triumph of the dawning !" 

Then laughed they with a wistful scorn, 
" You are a ghost, a long-dead vision ; 

You passed by ages ere was born 
This twilight of the days elysian. 



THE DREAMERS 41 

" There is no hope, there is no strife, 
But only haunted hearts that hunger. 

About a dead, scarce dreamed-of life. 
Old ages when the earth was younger." 

Then came by one in mad distress : 

" Haste, haste below, where strong arms weaken, 
The fighting ones grow less and less ! 

Great cities of the world are taken! 

" Dread evil rolls by like a flood. 

Men's bones beneath his surges whiten, 

Go where the ages mark in blood 

The footsteps that their days enlighten." 

Still they but heard, discordant mirth. 

The thin winds through the dead stalks rattle; 

While out from far-off haunts of earth 
There smote the mighty sound of battle. 

Now there was heard an awful cry. 
Despair that reddened heaven asunder. 

White pauses when a cause would die, 

AVhere love was lost and souls went under. 

The while these feebly dreamed and talked 
Betwixt the brown earth and the heaven, 

Faint ghosts of men who breathed and walked, 
But deader than the dead ones even. 

And out there on the middle height 

They sought in pools for haunted faces, 

Nor heard the cry across the night, 

That swept from earth's dread battle-places. 



42 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



The Lyre Degenerate 



The literature of the soul of nature as found in the great poets is 
inspiring ; but the decadent worship of beast, gnat and straddle-bug in 
the animal story and the artificial nature- verse of to-day is degrading. 
It is time that men of thought and spirit regenerate the world of 
America from its present materialistic slough with its consequent 
superficial cult of neo-paganism. 

Vanished the golden Homer, 

Vanished the great god Pan, 
Vanished the mighty mind of Greece, 

The ancient visions of man. 

Gone are the mighty moderns. 

Hands that swept the keys, 
That ran the splendid gamut of dream. 

Of life's deep harmonies. 

Dead are the lofty dreamers, 

The true and the wise of earth. 
Who stirred the spirits of yearning men 

And gave new impulse birth. 

No more those ladders to heaven. 

Golden rung upon rung 
Of the lofty deed and the splendid dream 

In the song of singers is sung; — 

For now in the shrunken pages 

Of helot dreamers of song 
The idiot children of primal earth, 

Brute and insect, throng. 

And this the end of beauty. 
The ultimate dreaming of man, 



THE LYRE DEGENERATE 43 

To shrink to this hideous, meaningless cult. 
Alas, for the great god Pan! 

Alas, for the lore of sages! 

Alas, for the Parthenon! 
Alas, for the yearning Israelite 

His mountains of woe upon ! 

After the mind of Shakespeare, 

After the soul of Christ, 
To sink to the level of hoof and paw. 

To keep this hideous tryst; 

Lost to that higher, holier thought 

Under this latter-day gleam, 
Living again in the mind of the beast 

An earlier, dreader dream. 

Sunk to the law of the jungle and fen 
From the dream of the godlike man, 

To learn in the lore of reptile and brute 
The cunning of Caliban. 

And this the end of the ages' art 

The world's high yearning pain, 
To trace the trail of the serpent and egg 

On the monster earth again. 

To Imow eternity howl and yelp. 

The primal instinct's dream ; 
To bask in the sun or curl in the dusk 

Of an arctic moonlight's gleam. 

Yea, better than all this age can give, 

Eather our lowest our least; 
Better to sin as men and women 

Than sink to the best of the beast, 



44 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Better than live in this hideous round 

Of claw and beak and wing, 
Better the dread eternal black 

Of death's eternal ring. 

And Thou who art of all things Lord, 

By whom all perish or dream, 
Who wakest the flower, the star, the love, 

The mighty world or the gleam; 

Who after sad winter wakest the rose. 

After midnight the dawn. 
By whose dread word the children of earth 

Up thy mountains have gone; 

Teach me the lesson that Mother Earth 
Teacheth her children each hour. 

When she keeps in her deeps the basic root, 
And wears on her breast the flower. 

And as the brute to the basic root 

In the infinite cosmic plan, 
So in the plan of the infinite mind 

The flower of the brute is man; — 

Man who blossoms in beauty and love 
And wisdom's wondrous bloom. 

And climbs by spiral stairways dread 
To the dawn of the world's great doom. 

And when doth come that marvelous change, 
Thou Master of being and death, 

let me die as the great dead died, 
Not passing of instinct's breath; — 



WORK 45 

Let me lie down with a loftier thought 

Than passing of beast and leaf, 
That the cry of human soul for soul 

Is greater than nature's grief; 

That man is nearer the mountains of God 

Than in those ages when 
He slept the sleep of the tiger and fox, 

And woke to the strife of the den. 

m 

And when from the winter of thy wild death 

Thine angels of sunlight call; 
Waken me unto my highest, my best. 

Or waken me not at all. 



Work 

To thy work, heart that aches. 
To thy soul's best work. 

Let not the bitter hour 
Stab with its grim dirk. 

Unto thy toil; and if the world 
Want not thy voice to-day. 

Grieve not, thine hour will come. 
Love is not waste alway. 

Art that grows from love 
Of beauty, life's high dream, 

Will not utterly vanish out. 
As weed-drift on a stream. 

Not one sunbeam is lost, 
Though it vanish in a cave. 

And He, great Master of Mystery, 
Will redeem the gift He gave. 



46 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



The Blind Caravan 

I AM a slave, both dumb and blind, 

Upon a journey dread; 
The iron hills lie far behind. 

The seas of mist ahead. 

Amid a mighty caravan 

I toil a sombre track, 
The strangest road since time began. 

Where no foot turneth back. 

Here rosy youth at morning's prime 

And weary man at noon 
Are crooked shapes at eventime 

Beneath the haggard moon. 

Faint elfin songs from out the past 

Of some lost sunset land 
Haunt this grim pageant drifting, vast, 

Across the trackless sand. 

And often for some nightward wind 

We stay a space and hark. 
Then leave the sunset lands behind. 

And plunge into the dark. 

Somewhere, somewhere, far on in front, 

There strides a lonely man 
Who is all strength, who bears the brunt. 

The battle and the ban. 

I know not of his face or form. 
His voice or battle-scars. 



THE BLIND CARAVAN 47 

Or how he fronts the haunted storm 
Beneath the wintry stars; 

I know not of his wisdom great 

That leads this sightless host 
Beyond the barren hills of fate 

Unto some kindlier coast. 

But often ^mid the eerie black 

Through this sad caravan 
A strange, sweet thrill is whispered back, 

Borne on from man to man. 

A strange, glad joy that fills the night 

Like some far marriage horn, 
Till every heart is filled with li^ht 

Of some belated morn. 

The way is long, and rough the road. 

And bitter the night, and dread. 
And each poor slave is but a goad 

To lash the one ahead. 

Evil the foes that lie in wait 

To slay us in the pass. 
Bloody the slaughter at the gate, 

And bleak the wild morass; 

And I am but a shriveled thing 

Beneath the midnight sky; 
A wasted, wan remembering 

Of days long wandered by. 

And yet I lift my sightless face 

Toward the eerie light. 
And tread the lonely way we trace 

Across the haunted nio;ht. 



48 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



Ode to the Laurentian Hills 

Blue hills, elusive, far and dim. 
You lift so high beyond our care; 

Where earth's horizon seems to swim. 
You dream in loftier air. 

Here where our world wends day by day 

Its sad, material round, 
We know not of that purer ray 

By which your heights are bound. 

Ignoble thoughts, ignoble aims 
Shut us from that high heaven; 

Those dawning dreams, those sunset flames, 
With which your peaks are riven. 

You seem so lone and bleak, so vast 

Beneath your dome of sky, 
So patient to the heat or blast 

That smites or hurtles by; 

So vague, withdrawn in mists, remote. 

Shut out in glories wide ; 
The very fleecy clouds that float, 

Your dreamings seem to hide. 

We in our plots of circumstance 
Are prisoners of a grim despair; 

While your far shining shoulders glance 
From heights where all things dare. 

Co"M we from out this cloak of glooms 

That prisons and oppresses. 
But reach those large, skj^-bounded rooms 

Of your divine recesses; 



THE ART DIVINE 49 

Then might we find that godlike calm, 

That peace that holdeth you, 
That soars like wordless prayer or psalm 

To heaven with your hlue. 

Then might we know that silent power. 

That patience, that supreme 
Indifference to day and hour 

Of your eternal dream. 

Then might we lose, in fire and dew 

Of your pellucid airs, 
This diffidence to dare and do. 

That grovels and despairs. 

And dream once more that high desire, 

That greatness dead and gone. 
When earth's winged eagles eyed the fire 

Your sunrise peaks upon. 

That power serene, life's vasts to scan. 

Beyond earth's futile tears ; 
Her hopes, her curse, the bliss, the ban 

Of all her anguished years. 



The Art Divine 

That Artist of the Universe 

Behind the wind and rain 
Hath drawn a dream of splendid death 

Across my window pane. 

And in the lonely, haunted day. 

My luminous maple tree 
Hath now assumed the magic pomp 

Of some weird pageantry. 



50 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

And 'mid the common day and thought, 

My casement to me brings 
A picture rarer than all art 

Of man's imaginings. 

Not all the wondrous hues of Watts, 
Not Turner's wizard scheme, 

With all its mastery, haunts my heart 
Like this autumnal dream; 

For o'er my sill, all life, all death, 
All moods life, death can name, 

Press on me from that magic frieze 
Of earth's funereal flame. 



Day and Night 

Two dreams forever pass my door, 
One gaudy, one in sombre dress: 

The Day, one weird and endless roar; 
The Night, a million silences. 

To one I give, the slave I am. 

My curse of being, fevered breath; 

The other, 'mid her godlike calm. 
Lifts me to dwell with Death. 



My Creed 

This is my creed in face of cynic sneer. 
The cavilling doubt, the pessimistic fear; — 
We come from some far greatness, and we go 
Back to a greatness, spite of all our woe. 



SLEEP 61 



Responsibility 

Man is not evil when he stands alone, 

'Tis in the aggregate he loses truth, 

And builds him up life's weakness by his ruth. 
ISTo single conscience makes its brother moan, 
The slaving toiler withered to the bone. 

The wasting age ere life hath garnered youth ; — 
N"o single soul hath done this ; each and all, 
We add a pebble to a mighty wall 

That shuts this world from freedom and God's truth. 



Sleep 

Sweet, brief condition of oblivion, 

Easer of care-worn mind and sorrowed soul ; 

Yea, next to death, God's most compassionate gift. 

Thou art that short mortality wherein men 
Give over their spirits to omnipotence. 
That sea of faith whereon men launch their barks, 
TJndoubting of the hope of their return. 
And float on opiate airs and favoring gales 
Out to some land beyond these realms of earth. 
And all its sad dominion, aching chain, 
That gnaws men's vitals festering day by day. 

The king, the galley-slave are equal here, 
The sinner and the saint alike have peace, 
A short forgetting of the angered hour. 
The poisoned memory, or the woe to be. 
4 



52 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Within thy mighty halls of phantasy 
Thine opiate silence hangs its curtain black, 
And ever the hideous dream is but a dream. 

'Tis sweet to rise to greet the kindling morn. 
When all is happiness, holy, glad and well :— 
But to the agonized spirit, life's remorse. 
Time's prisoners of failure, earth's defeat, 
'Tis agony to wake, to meet the sun. 
For these, kind Magician, thou most true, 
Give these, life's weary, woe's poor suffering ones, 
Earth's mightiest blessing, dream-compelling sleep. 



Sleep 

Dim Sleep, that keep'st the soul in awe. 

By gates that lead to the unknown: — 

All life sways to thy magic law. 

All portals open toward thy throne; — 

Thou arbiter in ebon stone, 

A mist about thee ever thrown. 

Thou peoplest the dark with visions filled. 
Thou breathest with thy poppied breath. 
And all the loves of life are stilled 
Unto similitude of death. 



THE QUESTION 53 



The Question 



Have we come to the outermost wall 

Of this terrible temple of time, 

To find it but iron after all, 

A horrible gaol of the souJ, 

A prison whose walls are a shard 

Of cold, implacable fact; 

'\^Tiere, through the dim centuries gone. 

The poor weak eons of men 

Have circled in bubbles of joy. 

To find but a shroud of despair, 

Cabined and crushed at the last ? 

And this : Is this but the end ? 

Have we fathomed the secret in vain? 

Was man but a last blind coil 

Of the brute evolution of time. 

Unwinding itself in the dark? 

Or the full-blown rose of a race, 

Wliose scent and whose petals are gone? 

Was the law: Aspire till ye die, 

For ye die when ye cease to aspire ? 

Is it true, we have fathomed the dark, 

Probed the deeps to the edge of the black, 

Till the fiat goes forth, Ye are done? 

Is it all ? And beyond it, what next ? 

Doth there glimmer the thread of a dawn? 



54 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

II. 

God! 

We utter the sound of a word, 

And power dissolves into nought. 

And vanity crumbles in dust; 

We, who have reached the bare wall. 

Have fathomed this prison of dark. 

Stand naked in awe of a name. 

We, who have balanced the " all," 

Weighed the dreams of the past in a scale, 

And found them but vanishing dust; 

Here in the end of the days; 

In this last high poise of a stair, 

Built out of the quarries of thought. 

Wrought slow in the workhouse of truth. 

Our knowledge and wisdom all gone; 

Like children all frighted and shamed. 

Stand in awe at the sound of a name; 

As hosts, that huddled at night, 

From the rude cruel riot of rout, 

Stay, fearful and doubting, dismayed, 

'Mid the grim, unknowable dark. 

For the glad, kind trumpet that calls 

From the far, white comfort of dawn. 

So we, who dreamed that we scaled 

The high white mountains of thought; 

From our ruined Babel of pride, 

In the knowledge of self and of God; 

Turn back from the jargon of tongues, 

That scoff and clamor and cry. 

To the wonder and awe of the child ; 

And plead in our weakness and doubt, 

At the barriers, muffled, of dark, 

That reach through the spaces of thought 

To the far-off vastness of God. 



THE QUESTION 65 

III. 

To the end? Have we really begun? 
Have we yet even entered that gate, 
That one wicket gate of the soul, 
Which leads to the city of life? 
That we say, we have come to the wall ; 
That we grope, like the blind, in the dark. 
For the slow closing in of the walls 
Of this grim torture-prison of life. 
Where casement on casement fades out, 
Till the last narrow pane disappears 
On the coffined despair of the soul. 
And the narrow iron shard echoes back 
The uliseen executioner's stroke? 

Is this but the end and the all. 
The blind, grim climax of time? 
Is God but necessities' will. 
Where chance for an eon pursues 
The rhythmic returns of a force? 
Or a flame that flickers one way? 
Or a huge grim hammer that beats 
All out on the anvil of time; 
All out, till the echoes repeat 
Each caverned black edge of the void? 

And this trembling flame of the soul. 
In its hollow-built shard of the skull, 
That flashes, then flickers and dies? 

What of it? So fickle, so dim, 
A candle-dip spark in the space; 
That it measures the infinite void. 
That it yearns to fill all with its hope. 
Its love, its desire, and its dream. 
That would grow to the stature of God? 



56 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

What is it? So mystically small; 
So infinite, vast in its aim; 
So great in its yearning and growth; 
It would leap to the light of the stars. 
Would sound the abysses of space, 
And measure the span of the worlds ? 

Those magical windows it throws 

Open wide to the wonders of life, 

That sympathy subtler than thought. 

This subconscious dreaming that doubts 

If waking be nightmare to sleep. 

That leads to the real hidden world, 

That world whose wonder pursues 

Even here in this prison of time, 

When the walls of this earth crumble down. 

And the veils of the senses grow thin. 

That shut from the realms beyond. 

This hearing so delicate, fine. 
This exquisite sense of the chords 
Beaten out from the fibres of sound. 

The magical world of the eye. 
That catches all colors, all blends 
Of mystical morning and night. 

Weird memory, wove of all hints 
Of the marvelous dreams of the past. 

Strange thought, that probes ocean and land, 
Man's soul, and the infinite void, 
Builds the future, illumines the past, 
Measures, weighs. Judges, pardons, and damns. 



THE HOUSE OF DREAMS 67 

Governs hearing, sight, memory, all; 
Lord-Seer of all gates of delight; 
Standing out on the mountains of dream. 

Then, greater than all, even love, 

That yearns through the eons of time, 

That throbs through the hates and despairs. 

Built out of the passions of men; 

Yea, this above all, leavens all, 

Titters down through the roots of the world. 

To the dry, hidden heart of all things. 

Waters ^11 deserts of drought. 

Spears million meadows with green, 

Up-burgeons all blossom and fruit. 



The House of Dreams 

'Mid all earth's mighty builders. 
That ancient builder. Time, 

Laughs at the art that crumbles 
And the airy arts of rhyme. 

But the story of godlike passion. 
The mighty hate or desire. 

Lives, when the hand that penned it 
Is ruin with Sidon and Tyre. 

Greater than all earth's temples. 
Glories of art's high goal. 

Is the mystical, magical temple 
That God built for the soul. 



58 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Not in a day or hour, 

Not in a thousand years. 
He hath fashioned, for love to dwell in, 

A temple of prayers and tears. 

'Tis the dream and not the deed 
That doth, eternal, endure; 

The spirit, and not the form, 
That makes earth's literature. 



Soul 

Wind of the wide world's mantled thought. 

About the vague vast blowing; 
This truth my wayward heart hath caught, 
That being hath more doors than thought. 
And life is more than knowing. 

That creeds of darkness or of mind 

Are but the scaly bark 
That slips from off the centuried rind. 
While inward works the impulse blind, 

Amid the crannied dark. 

And deeper than the builded theme 

Of priest or book or seer, 
There lies that life, that subtle dream 
That rules the sunny warmth and gleam 

That wakes the upward year. 

And greater than all thoughts that fall 
From wisdom's page or poet's song, 
That dim impulse behind it all. 
Flame from the ages' granite wall. 
That finds no written tongue. 



SOUL 59 

But speaks alike to mighty throngs 

Or alien life apart; 
That lifts whole races from their wrongs. 
Or gives to one poor ploughman songs 

That sing the whole world's heart. 

This impulse in each being rife. 

Deep hidden in each man; 
This inward, mystic flame of life 
Behind the passion or the strife, 

The blegsing or the ban. 

Behind that fierceness none can tame. 

Behind the ego dense, 
It stands in some dim cell aflame, 
Beyond all human thought or name, 

A part of the immense. 

Though science reads the cabined mind, 

The wheeling stars and sun. 
This mystic, veiled flame behind 
Its barriers dread, shows her more blind 

Than winds of night that run; 

And search the hollow hills of sleep. 

And beat with phantom hands; 
But know not of the dreams that creep. 
Or of the haunting ghosts that sweep 

Athwart the haggard lands. 

It is the master of all thought, 

All impulse and all dream, 
And builds or ruins, base or not. 
The fabric of the common lot. 

The blackness or the gleam. 



60 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

It gives through some weird inward need 

The centuries' impulse birth; 
And weaves in subtle dream or deed, 
Of those who burn or those who bleed. 

All tragedies of earth. 

Behind the mighty mind of Greece, 

The Titan force of Home, 
It bade earth's battles rage or cease. 
And reared those splendid dreams of peace, 

In column, plinth and dome. 

Behind the artist when he wrought 

Earth's beauty's rarest dream, 
Or nature's poet when he caught 
The melodies of morning fraught 
With summer's azure gleam. 

It kindled Homer's golden song 

Of elemental man. 
And lurks behind the fateful throng. 
That stairway dread, of earth's weird wrong 

From Christ to Caliban. 

It is that greater self behind 

All earth's confused gleam, 
That leads men up by stairways blind 
Of blackness, where they grope to find 

The heaven of their dream. 

At all earth's altars it hath knelt. 
Sought God 'mid stars and dew. 
Wherever life by plain or veldt 
Hath down the craving ages felt 
The agony of the few. 



SOUL 61 

All sorrows, passions, all delights. 

All hopings, all despairs, 
All earth's old splendors, all her blights, 
Her agony of wrongs and rights. 

Her ruined starward stairs; 

Her songs, her battles, her grim blades 

Forged in her caves of dream. 
Her woe thaj cowers or upbraids ; 
Yea', all that glories, all that fades. 

Was cradled in its gleam. 

And every hero-heart who stood 

Alone in some dread hour 
(When man faced man for ill or good, 
And history wrote her page in blood) 

Was governed by its power. 

Greater than mightiest thought of mind, 

That measures life by rule. 
It soars by stars or crannies blind, 
In those dread dreams of God, behind 

The Plato or the fool. 



Wind of the wide world's mantled thought 

About the vague vast blowing ; 
Beyond our little " is " and " not," 
Beyond the curtains of our thought. 
Life's mighty tides are flowing. 

In every common hour of life. 
In every flame that glows. 



62 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

In every breath of being rife 
With aspiration or of strife 
Man feels more than he knows. 

Earth's child of science counts the stars 

Upon God's garment's hem; 
He plumbs the seas, the heavens' bars, 
Chains Jove's fierce thunders to her cars, 

Eebuilds her rarest gem. 

But blind as night to that within. 

That demon, god, or elf. 
That weird impulse to soar or sin. 
That universe of dreams that spin, 

That heaven or hell in " self." 

That something subtle that outweighs 

The mightiest lore of man; 
That master of his dreams and days, 
Invisible in some weird haze 

Behind his bliss or ban. 

Which lifted Shakespeare from the clod, 

Yet spake in Caliban; 
That god in man, or man in god. 
That dreamed all music from the sod 

Since melody began. 

That outsoared Shelley's lark in flight. 

Beyond all dreams we know; 
That knew with Milton music's might, 
Or that exquisite dream delight 
Of Paganini's bow. 

That same dim impulse Saxon, Celt, 
Mohawk or Tartar Imew; 



SOUL 63 

Earth's mightiest power to move or melt. 
That in old Shylock's agony felt 
The tragedy of the Jew. 

This demon force that moves a world, 

Hath breathed a simple flower, 
With tendrils>milky-white upcurled, 
And with demoniac power hath hurled, 

Earth's might in one short hour. 

Hath burgeoned beauty from the blind, 

Deep earthy woodland's heart; 
This inward flame that wings the wind, 
Great in comparison to mind 

As nature unto art. 



Wind of the wide world's winnowed dream. 

About the vague vast blowing; 
Beyond our futile taper-gleam 
Of priestly creed and poet's theme, 

God's tides of might are flowing. 

Man feels the present, feels the past, 

As one born blind may know 
The sun, the earth, the rain or blast. 
Or those dread phantom shadows cast. 

His brother men who go. 

But round about the dreams we are. 

In caves of wind and fire. 
Where mind is cabined; soul afar. 
Doth rise eternal, star to star, 

To heights of God's desire. 



U POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



Life-Spent 

Out of the strife of conflict, 

Out of the nightmare wild, 
Thou bringest me, spent and broken. 

Like the life of a little child. 

Like the spume of a far-spent wave. 
Or a wreck cast up from the sea, 

Out from the pride of being, 
My soul returns to thee. 

Thou, who only art master, 

Lord of the weak and the strong; 

Who makest the kings of earth's struggles 
As the far refrain of a song. 



'^to* 



And thou teachest me all is as nothing 
Save to follow the fate love willed, 

And dree life's weird to the final port, 
Where the tumult of being is stilled : 

Where the woe that wrecked me is vanished. 
And the pride that stayed me is gone: 

And only the feeling of eventime. 
When the toil of the world is done : — 

0, Master of being and slumber. 

When the pageant and paean have passed; 
Take me where thy great silence 

Is vaster than all that is vast. 



TRUTH 65 

A Present-Day Creed 

What matters down here in the darkness? 

'Tis only the rat that squeals, 
Crushed down under the iron hoof. 

'Tis only the fool that feels. 

'Tis only the child that weeps and sorrows 

For the death of a love or a rose ; 
Wliile grim in its grinding, soulless mask. 

Iron, the iron world goes. 

God is an artist, mind is the all. 

Only the art survives. 
Just for a curve, a tint, a fancy. 

Millions on millions of lives ! 

If this be your creed, late-world poet, 

Pass, with your puerile pose; 
For I am the fool, the child that suffers, 

That weeps and sleeps with the rose. 



Truth 

"When" first I trod in wistful gropings lonely, 
And felt for God, in crude impassioned youth; 

I longed to know Thee and Thy spirit only. 
Thou great, clear-orbed Truth! 

For Thee alone I sought 'mid earth's confusions. 
By Thee, and Thee alone. I measured life. 

Mighty or petty; drew its deep conclusions, 
Plumbed its abysses, felt its ebb or strife. 



66 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

I sorrow o'er myself, for I have wronged 

The greatness that He made me, and have turned 

Aside in dreams, where lighter fancies longed. 
Or deeper channels where earth's passions burned. 

But Thou, still onward in Thy fixed unturning. 
Betwixt the olden ill and bitter moan. 

Dost tread the true old way. Thy lamp still burning, 
Led by Thy light alone. 

And round and round in Thy great orbit flaming. 
Like the fixed planets, Thou dost circle still, 

'Mid new confusions, olden loves defaming. 
And murky mists of those who work Thee ill. 



The Singer 

Life is too bitter, 

Strife too strong; 
Lackaday! lackaday! 

Dead is poor Song. 

There in the mart 

Of the thronging, teeming; 
Dead in the dust, 

His goldlocks gleaming. 

Killed in the fray, 

With his glad heart broken; 
Never a sigh for him, 

Never a token 



THE HEART OE SONG 67 

That the ill world cared; 

While with clamor and wrong. 
She lifts the brute victors 

Of Mammon along. 

Dead in the dust. 

With never a care for him ; 
Save some day the green wreath 

That the world's heart will wear 
for him. 

When there 'mid her hours 

That are truest and latest, 
She recalls, with dumb grieving. 

The voice of her greatest. 



The Heart of Song 

Too much of sameness dulls our sense, 
Which, like a bowstring, should be tense. 
To send those arrows swift and clear, 
To cleave the ether of the sphere, 
And strike the living heart of song, 
And from the electric centre thrill the 
listening throng. 

Too little of the love we feel, 
Too little of the hate we know; 

Where we should pray, we only kneel, 
And all the real life forego. 

How can our song be true and loud. 
And lifted to the morning cloud. 
Across the fields of sunlit dew? 
6 



68 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

How can we strike the lyre of life, 
And sound the future's battle-strife, 
Unless our hearts be vibrant, too? 

0, would that poets' songs might fling. 
Like dews from off the rosebud's wing. 

Odors of life's awakening: 
And never on the heart's best harpstrings 

cloy 
The splendor of the world's great lyric 



joy 



ijenius 

I BUILT a house one wondrous night. 

From splendid ruins of my soul, 
And filled it with the sound and light 

That girdles earth from pole to pole. 

Its walls of whitest marble there, 
A frozen, clustered splendor grew, 

And all things beauteous and rare 

Gladdened its perfect chambers through. 

Strange relics of gone olden days. 
Of ancient peoples, times and kings, 

In those rare chambers met my gaze. 
And gave me vast imaginings. 

All glories of earth's richest art. 

The painter's thought, the sculptor's dream, 
Belie of all the wide world's mart 

Blazoned beneath the moonlight's gleam. 



GENIUS 69 

The sweetest songs old poets sung, 
And life's dread, grimmest tragedies 

About these haunted galleries hung. 
Enriched with elfin melodies. 

For by some magic to me known 
I stole of music's saddest art. 
From Pan's wild note, Boetian blown, 
•To Paganini's haunted heart. 

Yea, mine alone, all this was mine, 
To dwell with splendid dreams alone. 

And own a majesty divine, 

Amid a marvelous world of stone. 

When one strange night I entered in 
And found a wondrous spirit there, 

That smote the moonlight pale and thin. 
With silvern magic sad and rare. 

So radiantly beautiful. 

It filled my mansion with new light, 
And bloomed a warmth across the cool. 

Pale, lonely hauntings of the night. 

So mystical, it stayed unstirred, 

And gazed with awful eyes divine, 
Across the human dreams that blurred. 

Into this tranced soul of mine. 

And ever since with inborn sight. 

Like opening of love's inward rose. 
Or vast uncurtaining of night. 

My heart a mighty sorrow knows; 



70 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

A Titan sadness, like the sea, 
Tliat moans and beats for evermore 

To break its manacles, and free 
Its spirit from the iron shore. 

From night to night the years go on, 
The ruined seasons sink and rise; 

And still that spirit, never flown, 
Looks at me from its wondrous eyes. 

And I must drink, undying pain, 

The love, the hate, the joy, the smart; 

And feel forever, like a chain, 

Earth's agony in my haunted heart. 



The Last Prayer 

Master of life, the day is done; 

My sun of life is sinking low; 
I watch the hours slip one by one 

And hark the night-wind and the snow. 

And must thou shut the morning out. 
And dim the eye that loved to see; 

Silence the melody and rout, 
And seal the joys of earth for me? 

And must thou banish all the hope. 
The large horizon's eagle-swim, 

The splendor of the far-off slope 

That ran about the world's great rim, 

That rose with morning's crimson rays 
And grew to noonday's gloried dome, 

Molting to even's purple haze 

When all the hopes of earth went home? 



THE LAST PRAYER 7i 

Yea, master of this ruined house, 

The mortgage closed, outruns the lease; 

Long since is hushed the gay carouse, 
And now the windowed lights must cease. 

The doors all barred, the shutters up. 

Dismantled, empty, wall and floor, 
And now for one grim eve to sup 
^With death, the bailiff, at the door. 

Yea, I will take the gloomward road 

Where fast the arctic nights set in. 
To reach the bourne of that abode 

Which thou hast kept for all my kin. 

And all life's splendid joys forego. 

Walled in with night and senseless stone, 

If at the last my heart might know 
Through all the dark one Joy alone. 

Yea, thou mayst quench the latest spark 

Of life's weird day's expectancy, 
Eoll down the thunders of the dark 

And close the light of life for me. 

Melt all the splendid blue above 

And let these magic wonders die. 
If thou wilt only leave me, Love, 

And Love's heart-brother, Memory. 

Though all the hopes of every race 

Crumbled in one red crucible, 
And melted mingled into space. 

Yet, Master, thou wert merciful. 



72 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



Unabsolved 

A Dramatic Monologue 

This poem is founded on the confession of a man who went with 
one of the expeditions to save Sir John Franklin's party, and who, 
being sent ahead, saw signs of them, but through cowardice was 
afraid to tell. 

FATHER, hear my tale, then pity me, 
For even God His pity hath withdrawn. 

death was dread and awful in those days ! 
You prate of hell and punishment to come. 
And endless torments made for those who sin. 
Stern priest, put down your cross and hearken me;— 

1 see forever a white glinting plain. 

From night to night across the twinkling dark, 
A world of cold and fear and dread and death. 
And poor lost ones who starve and pinch and die; — 
I could have saved them — I — yea, even I. 
You talk of hell ! Is hell to see poor frames, 
Wan, leathery cheeks, and dull, despairing eyes. 
From whence a low-flamed madness, ebbing out, 
Goes slowly deathward through the eerie hours ? 
To hear forever pitiless, icy winds 
Feel in the shivering canvas of the teut, 
With idle, brute curiosity nature hath. 
While out around, one universe of death. 
Stretches the loveless, hearthless, arctic night ? 

This is my doom, it sitteth by my side. 
And never leaves me through the desolate years. 
Go, take your hell to men who never lived, 
Save as the slow world wendeth, sluggish, dull. 



UNABSOL VED 73 

Even they must suffer also, poor bleak ones, 
Then is your feeble comfort nothing worth. 
You tell me to have hope, God will forgive. 

priest, can God forgive a sin like mine ? 
You say He is all-loving, did He lie 
With me that night amid the eyeless dark, 

And writhe with me, and whisper, " Save thyself. 

That way to north lies cold and age and death. 

And awful failure on men's awed tongues, 

To linger years hereafter ; Southward lies 

Home, heat and love, and sweet, blood-pulsing life, — 

Life, with its morns and eves and glad to-morrows. 

And joy and hope for many days to be?" 

Did He, I say, lie with me there that night. 

And know that awful tragedy beyond. 

And my poor tragedy enacted there? 

Then must He feel Him since as I have felt, 

And live that hideous misery in His heart. 

And, knowing this, I say unto thee, priest. 

He could not be a God and say, forgive. 

You plead my soul's salvation the one end 

And aim of all my thought; then hearken, priest. 

For this my sin hath made me more than wise : — 

That seems to me the one great sin I sinned 

In selling all to save mine evil self. 

Stay, hearken, priest, and haunt me not with hopes 

As futile as those icy-fingered winds 

That stirred the canvas there that arctic night. 

1 bid thee hark and mumble not thy prayers 
Like August bees heard in a summer room. 
That drone afar, but keep them for the dead, 

The dull-eared dead who sleep and heed them not. 



74 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

You say the Church absolves, you speak of peace ; 

You talk of what not even God can do, 

Be He but what you make Him. In my light, — 

And mine is light of one who knows the case. 

The facts, the reasons, and hath weighed them too, — 

There is but one absolver, the absolved. 

For I, since that far, fatal arctic night, 

Have been alone in some dread, shadowy court, 

Where I was judge and guilty prisoner too. 

Words, words are empty; were life built on words, 

How rich the poor would grow, the weak be strong, 

The hateful loving, and the scornful weak! — 

The king would be a peasant, and the poor 

A king in his own right; the murderer, red 

From his foul guilt, would pass to God's own breast. 

And all damned things, long damned of earth's consent, 

And some dread law much older far than we, 

Would blossom righteous under heaven's face. 

Still fared we north across that frozen waste 

Of icy horror ringed with awful night. 

To seek the living in a world of death; 

And as we fared a terror grew and grew 

About my heart like madness, till I dreamed 

A vague desire to flee by night and creep. 

By steel-blue, windless plain and haunted wood. 

And wizened shore and headland, once more south. 

There, as we went, the days grew wan and shrunk, 

And nights grew vast and weird and beautiful. 

Walled with flame-glories of auroral light, 

Einging the frozen world with mjo-iad spears 

Of awful splendor there across the night. 

And ever ^non a shadowy, spectral pack 



UNABSOL VED 75 

Of gleaming eyes and panting, lurid tongues 
Haunted the lone horizon toward the south. 

Long day by day a desolation went 

Where our wan faces fared, o'er all that waste; 

And I was young and filled with love of life, 

And fear of ugly death as some weird black. 

The enemy of love and youth and joy; 

A lonely, ruined bridge at edge of night. 

Fading in blacloiess at the outer end. 

And those were cold, stern men I went with there, 

Who held their lives as men do hold a gift 

Not worth the keeping; men who told dread tales. 

That made a madness in me of that waste 

And all its hellish, lonely solitude. 

And set my heart abeating for the south. 

Until that awful desolation ringed 

My reason round, and shrunk my fearful heart. 

Yea, Father, I had saved them but for this; — 

Why did they send me on alone, ahead, 

Poor me, the only weak one of that band, 

Who was too much of coward to show my fear? 

Why did life give me that mad fear of death, 

To make me selfish at the very last? 

Why did God give those men into my hand. 

And leave them victim to a craven fear 

That walked those lonely wastes in form of man? 

N"o, Father, take your cross, mine is a pain 

That only distant ages can out-burn. 

Forgiveness ! No, you know not what you say ; 

You churchmen mumble words as charmers do. 

And talk of God and love so glib and pat, 

And think you reach men's souls and give them light, 



76 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

When all the time my spirit is to you 

A land unfound, a region far-removed. 

Where walk dim ghosts of thoughts and fears and pains 

You never dreamed of. What know you of souls 

Like this of mine that hath girt misery's sum 

And found the black with which God veils His face? 

Then hearken, priest, and learn thee of my woe, 

For I have lain afar on northern nights, 

By star-filled wastes, and conned it o'er and o'er, 

And thought on God, and life, and many things. 

And all the baffling mystery of the dark. 

And I have held that awful rendezvous 

Of naked self with self alone and bare. 

And knew myself as men have never known ; — 

Have fought the duel, flashing hilt to hilt. 

And blade to blade, of flesh and spirit there. 

Until I lay a weak and wounded thing, 

Like some poor, mangled bird the sportsman leaves 

Writhing and twisting there amid the dark. 

You talk of ladders leading up to light. 
Of windows bursting on the perfect day, 
Of dawns grown ruddy on the blackest night. 
Yea, I have groped about the muffled walls. 
And beat my spirit's prison all in vain. 
Only to find them shrouded fold on fold; 
And still the cruel, icy stars look down, 
And my dread memory stayeth with me still. 

It was a strange, mad quest we went upon. 

To seek the living in the lifeless north. 

For days, and days, and long, lone, loveless nights, 

We set our faces toward the arctic sky. 



UNABSOLVED 77 

And threaded wastes of that lone wilderness. 
Beyond the lands of summer and glad spring, 
Beyond the regions kind of flower and bird, 
Past glint horizons of auroral gleams, 
A haunted world of winter's wizened sleep, 
Where death, a giant, aged, and stark and wan. 
Kept fast the entrance of those sunless caves 
Where hides the day beyond the icy seas. 

Then life ebbed lower in the bravest heart. 

And spake the leader, " If in ten more days 

We chance on nothing, then will we return, 

And set our faces once more to the south." 

For that dread land began to close us in. 

With cold and hunger, bit at our poor limbs. 

Till life grew there a feeble, flickering flame. 

Amid the snows and ice-floes of that land. 

Then ten days crept out shrunk and grey and wan. 

With nothing but the lonely, haunted waste. 

Then spake the leader, " If in five more days !" 

Then parcelled out those five grey, haggard days, 

While life to me grew like an ebbing tide, 

That surged far out from some dread death-like strand. 

And horror came upon me like the night. 

That seemed to gird the world in desolate walls. 

Then spake the leader, " If in three more days !" 

But when the third day waned we came, at last, 
Unto the shores of some dread, lonely sea. 
That gloomed to north and night, and far beyond, 
Where ruined straits and headlands loomed and sank. 
There seemed the awful endings of the world. 

Then spake the leader, " Let us go not yet. 
But stay a little ere we turn us south, 



78 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Perchance, poor souls, they might be somewhere here." 

And then to me, " You go, for you are young 

And strong, and life throbs quickest in your veins. 

And you have eyes more strong to see, for ours 

Are dimmed by the dread frost-mists of this land ; 

And creep out there beyond yon gleaming ledge. 

And bring me word of what you there may see. 

And if you meet no sign of mast or sail. 

Or hull or wreck, or mark of living soul. 

Then we will turn our faces to the south; 

For this great ocean's vastness hems us in. 

And death here nightly creeps from strand to strand, 

And binds with girth of black the gleaming world." 

Then, whispering " Madness, madness," to the dark, 

I crept me fearful o'er that gleaming ledge. 

And saw but night and awful gulfs of dark. 

And weird ice-mountains looming desolate there, 

And far beyond the vastness of that sea. 

And then — God, why died I not that hour? — 

Amid the gleaming floes far up that shore. 

So far it seemed that man's foot scarce could go, 

The certain, tapering outline of a mast. 

And one small patch of rag ; and then I felt 

No man could ever live to reach that place. 

And horror seized me of that haunted world. 

That I should die there and be froze for aye, 

Amid the ice-core of its awful heart. 

Then crept I back, the weak ghost of a life, 

A miserable, shaking, coffined fear. 

And spake, " I saw but ice and winds and dark. 

And the dread vastness of that desolate sea." 

Again he spake, " Creep out once more and look ; 

Perchance your sight was misled by the gleam." 

And then once more I crept out on that ledge. 



UNABSOL VED 79 

And saw again the night and awful dark, 

And that poor beckoning mast that haunts me yet; 

And as I lay those moments seemed to grow, 

As men have felt in looking down long years, 

And there I chose " 'twixt evil and the good,'* 

And took the evil; then began my hell. 

And back I crept with that black lie on lips, 

And spake again, " I only saw the night. 

And those weird mountains and the awful deep." 

At that he moaned and spake, " Poor souls ! poor soiils ! 

Then they are doomed if ever men were doomed." 

Whereat a sudden, great auroral flame 

Filled all the heaven, lighting wastes and sea. 

And came a wondrous shock across the world, 

Like sounds of far-off battle where hosts die, 

As if God thundered back mine awful lie. 

And I fell in a heap where all was black. 

When next I lived, we were full three days south, 
And two had died upon that dreadful march; 
Then memory came, and I went laughing mad, 
But kept mine awful secret to this hour. 

No, priest, you can do nothing; pain like mine 

Must smoulder out in its own agony. 

Till there be nought but ashes at the last. 

But something 'mid the pauses of the dark 

Doth teach me that I am not all alone ; 

For I have dreamed in my dread, maddest hour. 

An awful shadow, blacker than my black, 

Went ever with me. Hearken to me now: 

I never felt a hand or saw a face, 

I never laiew a comfort more than sleep. 

The winters they are only barren snows. 

And age is hard, and death waits at the last. 



80 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

But I have felt in some dim, shapeless way, 
As memories long remembered after youth. 
That back of all there is some mighty will. 
Beyond the little dreams that we are here. 
Beyond the misery of our days and years. 
Beyond the outmost system's outmost rim, 
Where wrinkled suns in awful blackness swim, 
A wondrous mercy that is working still. 



Return No More! 

Eeturn" no more, splendid sun. 
Sweet days come back no more: 

Bring back no more the budding hours, 
The springtime to my door. 

The calling bird, the wakening brook 

Make mock upon mine ear : 
For she who loved them with me then 

Went out with yesteryear. 

Fold, fold the year for aye in snows, 
Howl, Winter, by my door : 

For she, my rose, my bloom of life. 
Is snow for evermore. 



THE LYRE OF THE GODS 81 



The Lyre of the Gods 

Haunted, alone, withdrawn, in some dread spot, 
Eemote from men and all their burdened way. 

There is a lyre whereon the mad winds play 
The sad old songs of dead gone yesterday; 

Those splendid dreams of olden eld forgot, 
'Mid all the world's loud fray. 

It holds all chords of those forgotten tunes, 

Those great weird dreams of peoples lost and gone. 

Their pride and passion, all their olden woe. 

Long past and vanished. Now these strings upon 

Only the winds of unremembering blow, 

Where erstwhile sang the gold of Attic dawn, 
Sad tragedy, or splendid epic glow. 

Ages ago great Homer sought this place. 

And thundered on its strings the world's old woes 

Of gods and men, and smote in golden hours 
Of mighty song those rich eternal throes 

Of Helen and of fallen Ilium's towers. 
Euripides in dreams here sought the base. 

Sombre and great, of Greek dramatic song. 

In saddest notes of ancient woe and wrong. 

Mantuan Virgil, honey in his mouth. 

Sang to its chords in eclogues languorous, 

Of Tityrus' beeches, and the wet warm south; 
Or with ^neas wrecked the world again. 

Dying anew in dart of Dido's pain. 



82 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Stern Dante came and smote its chords in woe, 

So deep and dark, high heaven and hell between, 
That nature shuddered, hell from deeps below 

Leaped up in anguish of her lurid sheen. 
Here rang his song immortal, to the air. 

Bemoaned dead Beatrice on its silvern strings. 
That splendid woe beyond all woe's compare. 

In sonorous dirge of death's imaginings. 

Shakespeare the mighty, loftiest of our days. 
Here ran the subtle gamut of all things, 

Uttering the human heart and its weird maze 
Of love and hate and hope and dread despair. 

Those woes all hearts have sighed unto the air. 
Until from out its molten notes there ran 
The godlike, golden melody of man. 
And Song, enfranchised, from her wintry ban, 
Eose larklike, heavenward on ethereal wings. 

Milton, epic splendor of our tongue. 
The dew of poesy on great heart and lips. 
Smote here his lofty notes in Titan song 
Of mighty Lucifer in dark eclipse 
Of high ambition's failure headlong flung. 

And he of Ayr, old earth's immortal child. 

Pound its rare chords attuned to his hot heart. 

And smote a note across the world's bleak wild. 
Ennobling amid its frenzied smart. 

Here later came in mad or holy mirth, 
A motley crew attuned to earth's old song; 

High Coleridge, subtlest spirit of his kind, 

Shelley, child of heaven, like the wind. 

In joy or passion, kissing, spurning earth; 



THE sours HOUSE 83 

Keats, sad Greek of fated alien birth; 

Wordsworth, gentle shepherd of the mind; 
And rarest of all this rare belated throng, 
Sad Byron, mighty child of music's saddest wrong. 

Now its great chords are silent; seldom now 

The lonely wanderer touches its dead strings. 
He of the honeyed mouth and fated brow. 

Waking anew the world's imaginings; 
For gold and grim ambition hold men's hearts, 

All life is sordid, and a maddened cry 
Goes up like smoke from its great thronged marts, 
Wliere Truth lies slain of Mammon's deadly darts. 

And Love and Beauty, clip of their rare wings. 

Only the winds of Autumn, sonorous, sad. 

Thunder in discords strange its strings among, 

Kinging the vibrant note of some old mad 
Forgotten chord or surgent battle song: 

Some weird lost passion, hatred, love or woe, 

"Wlierewith the dead world loved, or slew its foe, 
Or thrilled to splendor when its heart was young. 



The Soul's House 

Life, one by one, you sealed to me 
Each room in this weird house of mine. 

Sacred to love's glad sanctity, 

Filled with youth's memories divine. 

First you did seal those chambers glad 
That opened on a garden wild. 

When all the winds of heaven were mad 
About the vague mind of the child. 
G 



84 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Yea, ages now it seems ago, 

I left the magic of those rooms, 

Turning those ponderous hinges slow. 
To deeper mysteries, stranger dooms. 

'Till time's grey corridors outgrew, 
To marble sculpture, mighty glow 

Of all earth's genius fretted through, 
With earth's old tragedy of woe. 

Then I traversed dim, ancient halls, 
Euins of time's rememberings. 

That rusted on their mighty walls 
The memories of a thousand kings. 

Chaldea, Egypt, here looked down 

From hideous heads and shadowed wings. 

Till all the drowsed air seemed to drown 
In sense of awful whisperings. 

Athens, austere, of snowy dome 

And frieze of marble, seemed to wait; 

And all the eagled spears of Eome 

Did clang their bronzed arms at the gate. 

And then I went and left that past. 
Dread vision of heads and columns and 
spears. 

And awful hush and tumult vast 

That haunt me down the haunting years. 



11 



ORPHEUS 85 



Orpheus 

Long ago a sweet musician. 
On a Thracian plain at noon, 

In the golden drowse of summer 
Played so heavenly a tune: 

That the very hills and forests 
To its chords their audience lent, 

And the streams were hushed to listen 
To this wondrous instrument. 

And stilled was all the murmur 
Of sweetest winds at noon. 

And babbling brooks along their beds 
Hushed their melodious tune. 

The gales that from the ocean came 
To kiss the summer lands. 

Fell dying at the harmony 
That floated from his hands. 

And youth forgot its passion. 

And age forgot its woe. 
And life forgot that there was death 

Bljfore such music's flow. 

And there was hush of laughter. 
Where sported youth and maid, 

And those who wept forgot their tears 
While such sweet notes were played. 



86 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Yea, life was stayed a season, 

Ambition, Greed and Crime, 
And Hate and Lust crept shuddering, 'neath 

The curtain folds of time. 

And war in its 'mid battle hushed 

Upon the 'sanguined plain, 
The sword and spear uplifted 'mid 

The slayer and the slain. 

While even the gods of heaven sank 

From their divine abode. 
Drawn downward by the magic dreams 

That from his fingers flowed. 



Glen Eila 

(A Highland Ballad) 

Cradled in loneliness, splendor and clouds, 
Where the grim mountains lift up their headlands. 
Hushed in its rain-mists, walled from the world. 
Dreams the glad vale of Glen Eila. 

Lone are its hills to the edge of the world, 
With their brows flame-tipped with the heather. 
Till down the hushed noonday are heard the dead feet 
Of the clansmen who once trod the heather. 

But it's far, far the day, and it's long the long weeks, 
Looking back down the years with their sorrow, 
Since love lingered here and gleamed on the cheeks 
Of Mahri, the dream of Glen Eila. 



GLEN EILA 87 

The touch of the morning, the sound of the brook. 
In her face and her voice set me dreaming; 
Till it seemed the wild grandeur of glenside and peak 
But existed to frame her eyes' gleaming. 

She comes once again when the night winds sob in 
Eound the sad, wintry curve of the mountains. 
And I know her sweet ghost like a dream from the past. 
Welling up from out the heart's fountains. 

Two little clasped hands, two pleading soft eyes 
Looking up to me, true, in the twilight, 
And the stir of a leaf, where the shy, watchful wind 
Went past — God help and forgive me. 

the evil of youth and the madness of youth. 
And the curse of this world with its dragon 
Of callous grim form and its mock of a heart, 
That crushed my sweet flower of Glen Eila ! 

1 saw my proud mother, my father so grim. 
With his twenty grim lord-lines behind him: — 
And I put by her hand, and lost what this world 
Hath sweetest of gift in its giving. 

I could not tell all, how could I explain 
To so pure and so trusting a spirit? 
But I put her love by with a poor shifty lie. 
And fled from my heart and Glen Eila. 

she dreamed on the slopes, and she gazed far to sea. 

And she looked long to mountainward waiting, 

Till the wistful eyes dimmed, and the trusting heart 

broke 
In the tryst of the years in Glen Eila ! 



88 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Till a slumber more kind than the heart of a man 

Took her peaceful at last to its keeping : 

And the stars peep at night, and the mountains look 

down 
On the grave where my dead love is sleeping. 

My henchmen are many, my castle walls old, 
And my station the pride of my people; — 
But I put it all by, with this world and its lie, 
And I long for the slopes of Glen Eila. 

I long for the brachen, the blue slopes of heather. 
The purpling peaks in the twilight; 
And a far away voice, and a long vanished face. 
That gleams from the slopes of Glen Eila. 

And oft when I weary of statecraft and rout. 
And the simper of dame and court-lady ; 
I wander, in dreams, to the heatherhill gleams, 
And the glen that I trod with my Mahri. 

And I see her sweet face, and I touch her soft hand. 
And the years roll back with their shadow 
Of dim dreary days to those God-given hours 
When I wandered the slopes of Glen Eila. 

the grim, heavy years, the sad, thievish years, 

That steal all our youth and our gladness ! 

Would they but bring to me, through their dream and 

their dree 
Nepenthe to life and its madness : — 

Till I stand once again, 'mid the sun and the rain. 
Where the mountains slope down with their heather; — 
While the long years they pass, like the wind in the 

grass. 
With Mahri and love in Glen Eila. 



THE BETRAYED SINGER 89 



The Betrayed Singer 

There came a singer through the world, 

The world of grim to-day. 
The fire of life was on his lips 
, And in his heart the May. 

He sang a golden song of love. 

Of truth and truth's desire. 
And flung a majesty of might 

From his alluring lyre. 

He came to where the cliques of song, 
Life's grim Sanhedrim dwelt; 

They hated him because of all 
The truth he sang and felt. 

They hated him and cried him down, 

Because they saw in him 
The lark in heaven, sweet and clear, 

That made their singing dim. 

They slew him with their evil tongues. 

Their artful, false disdain, 
And life lost all that joy and hope 

That should have been its gain. 

They drove him from the doors of hope. 

The gates of human fame. 
Until in dusk of evil spite 

He died without a name. 



90 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

His melody went fading out. 

Till under heaven's bars 
His mighty music sobbed and sank. 

And melted to the stars. 

Then in his place they set them up 

False gods of tinsel show. 
Poor helot, soulless, mumming mock 

Of mighty long ago. 

And built them temples born of art 

Upon an evil time, 
When gold and power and pelf were prized, 

And rhyme was only rhyme. 

And starved the yearning sons of God 

Of beauty, love and truth, 
And gave them stones who asked for bread. 

In dread and shameless ruth. 

How long, Life, this mighty ill. 
This reign of hate? How long. 

Permit to dree their evil weird, 
Earth's murderers of song? 



IRature IDerse 



THE HOME OF SONG 93 



Nature 

Nature, the dream that wraps us round. 
One comforting and saving whole; 

And as the clothes to the body of man, 
The mantle of the soul. 

Nature, the door that opens wide 
From this close, fetid house of ill ; 

That lifts from curse of street to vast 
Eeceding hill on hill, 

Nature, the mood, now sweet of night, 
Now grand and splendid, large of day; 

From vast skyline and cloudy towers, 
To stars in heaven that stray. 

Nature, the hope, the truth, the gleam. 
Beyond this bitter cark and dole ; 

Whose walls the infinite weft of dream. 
Whose gift is to console. 



The Home of Song 

Here in northern solitudes. 
Sounding shorelands, glooming woods, 

Where the pines their dreams rehearse, 
Is the home of haunting verse. 



94 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Dreams of beauty here inspire 
All the summer's radiant fire. 

In the gleam of leaf and bird, 
Ere the Autumn's voice is heard, 

Fluting, soft, her woodland tune 
Down the golden afternoon. 

Where the seaward ships go down, 
By some ancient Norman town; 

Where the northern marshes lie. 
Golden under azure sky; 

Where the northern woodland glooms, 
Luminous in leafy rooms. 

With its ancient, sunlit wine, 
Under smoke of dusky pine: 

Here the soul of silence broods. 
Under haunted solitudes; 

Here that spirit rare and pure, 
Of the muses who endure, 

Dreams with Wisdom's quiet eye. 
While the phantom years go by. 

Where far sunlands shine and drowse. 
And great leafy, golden boughs. 

Swaying, pendulous, within 
A sleep, diaphanous and thin, 



HIGHER KINSHIP 95 

Answer to the drowsy mind, 

And loiterings of the thoughtful wind: 

Here in seasons lone and long, 
The spirit rare of northern song 

Keeps in dreams, remote, apart. 
The cadences of her own heart. 



Higher Kinship 

There is a time at middle summer when, 

In weariness of all this saddening world, 

The simple nature aspects seem to me 

As a close kindred, sweet and kind and true, 

Giving me peace and comfort, and a joy 

Not of the senses, but of the inward soul. 

The restful day, the sunny leaf and wind. 

The patch of IdIuc like windows shining down. 

Do give to life a beauty and a calm 

And a sweet sadness, that this mighty world 

And all its myriad triumphs cannot give. 

let me live with Nature at her door. 

And taste her home-brewed pleasures, simple, glad; 

The beauty of day, the splendor of the night ; 

Not in great palace halls, great cloister domes, 

The smoke of cities and the thronging din ; 

But out with air and woodlands, shining sun; 

These my companions, this my roof, my home ! 



96 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



Wind 

I AM Wind, the deathless dreamer 

Of the summer world; 
Tranced in snows of shade and shimmer. 

On a cloud scarp curled. 

Fluting through the argent shadow 

And the molten shine 
Of the golden, lonesome summer 

And its dreams divine. 

All unseen, I walk the meadows. 

Or I wake the wheat. 
Speeding o'er the tawny billows 

With my phantom feet. 

All the world's face, hushed and sober. 

Wrinkles where I run; 
Turning sunshine into shadow. 

Shadow into sun. 

Stirring soft the breast of waters 

With my winnowing wings, 
Waking the grey ancient wood 

From hushed imaginings. 

Where the blossoms drowse in languors. 

Or a vagrant sips, 
Lifting nodding blade or petal 

To my cooling lips; 

Far from gloom of shadowed mountain. 
Surge of sounding sea. 



WIND 97 

Bud and blossom, leaf and tendril. 
All are glad of me. 

Loosed in sunny deeps of heaven. 

Like a dream, I go. 
Guiding light my genie-driven 

Elocks, in herds of snow; — 

Ere I moor them o'er the thirsting 

Woods and fields beneath. 
Dumbly yearning, from their burning 

Dream of parched death. 

Not a sorrow do I borrow 

From the golden day, 
Not a shadow holds the meadow 

Where my footsteps stray; 

Light and cool, my kiss is welcome 

Under sun and moon. 
To the weary vagrant wending 

Under parched noon ; 

To the languid, nodding blossom 

In its moonlit dell. 
All earth's children sad and yearning 

Know and love me well. 

Without passion, without sorrow. 

Driven in my dream. 
Through the season's trance of sleeping 

Cloud and field and stream; — 

Haunting woodlands, lakes and forests, 

Seas and clouds impearled, 
I am Wind, the deathless dreamer 

Of the summer world. 



dd POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



Earth 

Mystical ash of all being, 
Tomb and womb of all time, 
Healing, destroying, upbuilding, 
Eeceiving, riving apart; 
Cool and warm for rest. 
Or hot for burgeoning life ; 
Clod ; yet pulsate with being ; 
Infinite, ever recurring. 
Dark, sad house of all joy. 

Night that dawns in the bud 
Whose perfect day is the flower; 
Earth, red mantle of ruin. 
Beautiful shroud of decay. 
Marriage bed of the cosmos. 
Love that gives and receives, 
Nubian nurse of all beauty. 
Swart, ultimate fondler of joy; 
Out of thy bosom all come. 
Back to thy bosom return, 
Where, in thy mystical chambers. 
Purified, sifted, restored. 
All life, dismantled, out-worn, 
Obeys the inevitable law. 

Eed Egypt rose from thy dust; 
Greece, thine ineffable bloom. 
Child of thy magical beauty. 
Woke like a lotus at dawn. 



SNOW 99 

All the mad might of the ages, 
Their sad fated beauty, their joy. 
Their passionate hopes and despairs. 
Arose from thy bosom, and back 
To thy yearning bosom return. 

And thou. Swart Mother, Wise! 
Thou to thy children wert kind. 
Thou smoothedst the saddest of brows. 
Held to thy breast all lovers. 
Folded their beauty of limb. 
As thou dost fold to thy rest 
Thy rarest and fairest of bloom. 

And never undaunted spirit 
Trod like a god thy rime. 
But thou gavest him splendid rest. 
Where in thy sepulchered chambers. 
Thy great imperishable sleep. 
Those kings of thy heart's best joy. 



Snow 

Down" out of heaven. 

Frost-kissed 

And wind-driven. 
Flake upon flake. 
Over forest and lake, 

Cometh the snow. 

Folding the forest. 

Folding the farms. 
In a mantle of white; 

And the river's great arms, 

L OF C 



100 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Kissed by the chill night 
From clamor to rest, 

Lie all white and shrouded 
Upon the world's breast. 

Falling so slowly 

Down from alcove, 
So white, hnshed, and holy. 

Folding the city 
Like the great pity 

Of God in His love; 
Sent down out of heaven 

On its sorrow and crime. 
Blotting them, folding them 

Under its rime. 

Fluttering, rustling. 

Soft as a breath, 
The whisper of leaves, 

The low pinions of death, 
Or the voice of the dawning. 

When day has its birth. 
Is the music of silence 

It makes to the earth. 

Thus down out of heaven, 
Frost-kissed 

And wind-driven, 
Flake upon ilake, 
Over forest and lake, 

Cometh the snow. 



THE DRYAUS HOUSE 101 



Snowfall 

Down drops the snow, the fleecy hooding snow, 
On town and wood and haggard, wind-blown space, 

And hushes tlie storms, and all weird winds that blow 
Upon the world's dead face. 

Like the great rest that cometh after pain. 

The calm that follows storm, the great surcease. 

This folding slumber comforts wood and plain 
In one white mantling peace. 

So when His winter comes. His folding dream, 
His calm for tempest-tost and Autumn-lorn; 

'Twill gently fall, as falls by wood and stream 
His snows this winter morn. 



The Dryad's House 

This cool and glooming summer wood 
Is wise and silent in its mood. 

Forever moving in its dream 

Of breathing leaf and sunny gleam. 

Whatever voice within is heard, 
Of stir of leaf or whir of bird \ 



102 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Without, its trance is ever one 

Of breathing sleeping shade and sun. 

The gleaming gold of summer fields 
Dreams through its green of leafy shields, 

And windows of the shining wind, 
With grey trunks looming dim behind, 

Grotesque and ancient; all their peace 
The dreams of gods of olden Greece ; — 

As though in ages long ago, 
Before their dreams began to grow. 

Some startled, fleeing dryad hid 
Within this leafy coverlid, 

Enmeshed her silvern reveries here, 
And filled its shadows with her fear, 

And all the woodland mind inwrought 
With golden filagree of thought 

And maiden fancies, pensive spun. 
From purpled skeinings of the sun. 

Woven on sunbeam-shuttled looms, 
Dim, luminous, of these leafy rooms. 



CAPE ETERNITY 103 

August 

A SPIRIT of one rare mood, of one high dream, 
She stands with finger on lip in this great hush 

Of distant hill and wood and field and stream, 
As one who harkens to the hermit thrush 

By some grave gateway, large, of evening dream; 

And hg,rkening, lingers, hearing in the sound 
The beauty and grief of all the great dead years ; 

So hushed and rapt is all the world around 
In that sweet sadness too remote for tears, 

But felt in all this beauty of summer swound. 

Far out, earth's mighty waters, down the day 
Are strung to mystic cadence ; dim, removed 

The wind's low litanies ; and far away 

The softest sounds of summer, mute, reproved 

By this rare silence of the enraptured day. 

Only the inward breathings of the leaves 

In woodlands; sigh of subtlest summer sleep; 

That magic charm which earth's high dream achieves, 
As those great eyes in mystic trance drink deep. 

And that great breast alternate joys and grieves. 



Cape Eternity 

(A Giant Promontory on the Saguenay River, Quebec) 

About thy head where dawning wakes and dies. 
Sublimity, betwixt thine awful rifts, — 
'Mid mists and gloom and shattered light, uplift^ 
Plding in height the measure of the skies, 



104 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Here pallid Awe forever lifts her eyes, 
Through veiling haze across thy rugged clefts, 
Where far and faint the sombre sunlight sifts, 
'Mid loneliness and doom and dread surmise. 

Here nature to this ancient silence froze, 
When from the deeps thy mighty shoulders rose. 
And hid the sun and moon and starry light ; — 
Where based in shadow of thy sunless floods. 
And iron bastions, vast, forever broods, 
Winter, eternal stillness, death and night. 



The Mystery 

What is this glory nature makes us feel. 
And riots so sweet within us? Can it be 
That there with man is kindred mystery 
Of being, old heredity 
Of bud and leaf, of pulsing plant and tree. 
And earth and air ; that in some olden speech,- 
Ere words had being — doth our spirits reach : 
Some essence akin to music, subtle, deep, 
That plumbs our souls as dreams melt through 
our sleep? 

Yea, it must fee : for often unto me 

A fallen leaf hath greater power to stir 

Than mighty volumes of earth's history. 

Or all the tragedy of life's great blur. 

What is it ? that so little ; plant or flower, 

A sunset or a sunrise, gives us wings, 

Or opens doors of glory every hour. 

To godlike thoughts — and life's imaginings. 



SPRING 105 



Yea, 'tis a greatness that about us lies ; 
Within our touch — pervading air and sod, 
That bounds our being — hidden from our eyes — 
But inward, subtle, — guiding men to God. 



Spring 

Season of life's renewal, love's rebirth, 

And all hope's young espousals, in your dream 

I feel once more the ancient stirrings of earth ! 

Now in your moods benign of sun and wind, 
The worn and aged, winter-wrinkled earth. 
Forgetting sorrow, sleep and iced snows. 
Turns joyful to the glad sun bland and kind, 
And in his kiss forgets her ancient woes. 

Men scorn thy name in song in these late days, 
When life is sordid, crude, material, grim, 
And love a laughter unto brutish minds. 
Song a weariness or an idle whim. 
The scoff of herds of this world's soulless hinds. 
Deaf to the melody of your brooks and winds, 
Blind to the beauty of your splendid dream. 

Because earth's hounds and Jackals bay the moon. 
Must then poor Philomel forbear to sing, 
Or that life's barnfowl croak in dismal tune. 
Love's lark in heaven fail to lift her wing? 

And even I, who feel thine ancient dreams. 

Do hail thee, wondrous Spring; 

Love's rare magician of this waking world, 



106 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Who turnest to melody all earth's harshest themes, 
And buildest beauty out of each bleak thing 
In being, where thy roseate dreams are furled. 

In thee old age once more renews his youth, 

And turns him kindling to his memoried past, 

Eeviving golden moments now no more. 

By blossoming wood and wide sun-winnowed shore ; 

While youth by some supreme, divine intent. 

Some spirit beneath all moods that breathe and move, 

Builds o'er all earth a luminous, tremulous tent 

In which to dream and love. 

All elements and spirits stir and wake 
From haunts of dream and death. 
Loosened, the waters from their iced chains 
Go roaring by loud ways, from fen and lake ; 
While all the world is filled with voice of rains, 
And tender droppings toward the unborn flowers. 
And rosy shoots in sunward blossoming bowers. 

Loosened, the snows of winter, cerements 
From off the corpse of Autumn, waste and flee; 
Loosened the gyves of slumber; plain and stream. 
And all the spirits of life who build and dream. 
Enfranchised, glad and free ! 

Far out around the world by woods and meres, 
Eises, like morn from night, a magic haze. 
Filled with dim pearly hints of unborn days, 
Of April's smiles and tears. 

Far in the misty woodlands, myriad buds. 
Shut leaves and petals, peeping one by one, 
As in a night, leafy infinitudes, 



SPRING 107 

By some kind inward magic of the sun; 
Where yestereve the sad-voiced, lonesome wind 
Wailed a wild melody of mad winter's mind, 
Now clothed with tremulous glories of the spring. 

Or in low meadows where some chattering brook 
But last eve silent, or in slumbrous tune 
Whispering sad melodies to the wan-faced moon. 
Like life slow ebbing; now with all life's dowers. 
Goes loudly shouting down the joyous hours. 

Wan weeds and clovers, tiny spires of green, 
Kising from myriad meadows and far fields, 
Drinking within the warm rains sweet and clear, 
Put on the infinite glory of the year. 

After long months of waiting, months of woe. 

Months of withered age and sleep and death. 

Months of bleak cerements of iced snow. 

After dim shrunken days and long-drawn nights 

Of pallid storm and haunted northern lights ; 

Wakens the song, the bud, the brook, the thrill. 

The glory of being and the petalled breath. 

The newer wakening of a magic will. 

Of life restirring to its infinite deeps. 

By wave and shore and hooded mere and hill ; — 

And I, too, blind and dumb, and filled with fear. 

Life-gyved and frozen, like a prisoned thing. 

Feel ail this glory of the waking year. 

And my heart, fluttering like a young bird's wing, 

Doth tune itself in joyful guise to sing 

The splendor and hope of all the splendid year. 

The magic dream of spring. 



108 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

In the Spring Fields 

There dwells a spirit in the budding year — • 
As motherhood doth beautify the face — 
That even lends these barren glebes a grace, 
And fills grey hours with beauty that were drear 
And bleak when the loud, storming March was here : 
A glamor that the thrilled heart dimly traces 
In swelling boughs and soft, wet, windy spaces. 
And sunlands where the chattering birds make cheer. 

I thread the uplands where the wind's footfalls 
Stir leaves in gusty hollows, autumn's urns. 
Seaward the river's shining breast expands. 
High in the windy pines a lone crow calls. 
And far below some patient ploughman turns 
His great black furrow over steaming lands. 



Renewal 

Once more the sweet glad springtime 

Comes over the lonely land, 
And hearts long worn and sorrow-frayed 

Are glad for the breezes bland. 

Once more the warm sun smites the earth 

With kindly touch and smile. 
And the budding loves are filling the woods 

For many a gladdening mile. 

Age and death and sorrow 

Go when the torch warms in. 
And youth and joy and love and hope 

The lone worn spaces win. 



THE DRYAD 109 

And man, the tired wayfarer, 

Turns from his grief and toil. 
To greet the tender buds, and sweet. 

That peep from the burgeoning soil. 

Forgot are the ills that smite us, 

In hours both lone and lorn. 
For the joys of earth have seized the world 

In the moods of love reborn. 

How long, mighty Mother, 

With thy returning power. 
How oft with magic of thy dream 

"Wilt thou bring back the hour, 

Before the great sleep claims us, 

Surcease from memory's ill. 
When the joy no more with the crocus-bud 

And Spring, flames over the hill? 



The Dryad 

Her soul was sown with the seed of the tree 

Of old when the earth was young ; 
And glad with the light of its majesty 

The light of her beautiful being upgrew. 
And the winds that swept over land and sea. 

And like a harper the great boughs strung, 

Whispered her all things new. 

The tree reached forth to the sun and the wind 

And towered to heaven above. 
But she was the soul that under its rind 

Whispered its joy through the whole wood's 
span. 



110 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Sweet and glad and tender and kind; 
For her love for the tree was a holier love 
Than the love of woman for man. 

The seasons came and the seasons went 

And the woodland music rang; 
And under her wide umbrageous tent, 

Hidden forever from mortal eye, 
She sang earth's beauty and wonderment. 

But men never knew the spirit that sang 

This music too wondrous to die. 

Only nature, forever young, 

And her children forever true, 
Knew the beauty of her who sung 

And her tender, glad love for the tree; 
Till on her music the wild hawk hung 

From his eyrie high in the blue 

To drink her melody free. 

And the creatures of earth would creep from 
their haunts 

To stare with their wilding eyes. 
To hearken those rhythms of earth's romance, 

That never the ear of mortal hath heard; 
Till the elfin squirrels would caper and dance, 

And the hedgehog's sleepy and shy surprise 

Would grow to the thought of a bird. 

And the pale wood-flowers from their cradles 
of dew 
Where they rocked them the whole night long. 
While the dark wheeled round and the stars 
looked through 
Into the great wood's slumbrous breast. 



THE DRYAD 111 

Till the grey of the night like a mist ontblew; 
Hearkened the piercing joy of her song 
That sank like a star in their rest. 

But all things come to an end at last 

When the wings of being are furled. 
And there blew one night a maddening blast 

From those wastes where ships dismantle 
• and drown. 
That ravaged the forest and thundered past, 

And in the wreck of that ruined world 

The dryad's tree went down. 

When the pale stars dimmed their tapers of 
gold. 
And over the night's round rim 
The day rose sullen and ragged and cold. 

Over that wind-swept, desolate wild. 
Where the huge trunks lay like giants of old, 
Prone, slain on some battlefield, silent and 

grim. 
The wood-creatures, curious, mild. 

Searching their solitudes, found her there 

Like a snowdrift out in the morn ; 
One lily arm round the beech-trunk bare. 

One curved, cold, under her elfin head. 
With the beechen shine in her nut-brown hair, 

And the pallor of dawn on her face, love-lorn, 

Beautiful, passionless, dead. 



112 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



A Northern River 

Where northern forests, dusk and dim. 
Loom dark the arctic skies along; 

'Mid well-heads of the world abrim, 
My swift tides sparkle into song. 

By craggy waste, by haunted verge, 

With woodland high on woodland piled, 

Wherein rude autumn's iron surge 
Thundered afar, and smote the wild. 

By regions where the night-wind grieves, 

Down sunsets red and ruinous, 
'Neath crocus dawns and purpling eves, 

And midnights lorn and luminous : — 

My winding waters swell their tides, 
Eocked 'mid the forest's rude unrest, 

Where brooks down gleaming mountain sides 
Sing, bird-like, brimming to my breast. 

By craggy scarp and sheering rock 
My shining music curves and cools, 

Then leaps with lightning roar and shock 
Into a hundred thunder pools. 

By cabins in some wood's recess. 

By farmlands where the fields slope down ; 
By busy gleaming villages. 

To far-off breath and smoke of town : — 



A NORTHERN RIVER 113 

To furnace blast of city's roar, 

Wliere life goes madd'ning to and fro, 

In ceaseless murmurs evermore; — 
My swift tides eddy in their flow. 

Betwixt the lily and the rose 

Of dewy night and petalled morn, 
When life's dim wonder-gates unclose, 
- New glories on my breast are born. 

In quiet borders where I sweep, 

Housed in their roofs of bloom and sod. 

My music singing round their sleep. 
The dead lie looking up to God ; 

In those low homes of love's release. 

Where all are foolish, all are wise. 
The daisies blooming round their peace, 

The dust of sleep upon their eyes. 

By dreaming banks my voice grows dumb 

In shades of summer sanctity 
And often here glad lovers come 

On summer nights, and know with me, — 

The under-dreams that throng and bless. 

The unspoken, swift imaginings ; 
The sweetness tongue cannot express, 

The happiness at heart of things. 

And often little children race 

With sunny laughter where I pass. 

And kneel and mirror in my face 
Their innocence, as in a glass. 



114 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Curved, sunny-breasted, where I dream. 
Here in and out, then far away, 

By snowy surge and amber gleam, 
My waters silver into spray. 

By lowlands when the noons are still, 
And all the world enmeshed in sleep; 

Now by a bridge, a ruined mill, 
I wake with murmurs, ere I leap 

In thunders o'er a craggy ledge. 
To churn in surge, then sparkle, free, 

In gold, across the world's dim edge, 
With wimpling music to the sea. 



The Humming Bee 

Glad music of the summer's heart, 
Jargoning from flower to flower, 
A part of each unconscious hour 

Until the happy days depart! 

Thou dream-like toiler of the fields ! 

Each honeyed spot thou knowest well 
Where Nature's heart her sweetness yields. 

Some ruined trunk thy citadel; 
There buildest a home for Winter's hour 

In some lone, sunlight-haunted place, 
When all the year is at its power, 
And June's high-tide on bank and bower 

Mirrors in blossoms Nature's face. 



THE HUMMING BEE 115 

At early morn by breathing wood. 

Or in some dewy clover dell, 
Tuning the young day's solitude, — 

Or down the slumbrous afternoon 
Eich-freighted, wingest thy tuneful way. 

Self-musing, murmurous, musical, 
Amid the whole world's dreamy swoon; 

Sole voice of all the drowsed day, 
"lentil the gradual shadows fall : — 

Then, by some lonely pasture-fell 
At ruddy eve when homeward come 
Past deepening shade or fading ray 
The weary children of the day, 

I hear thy joyous, drowsy hum, 
Till stars peep out and woods breathe low. 

And sounds of human toil grow dumb, 
And Night, the blessed, comes apace. 
Bending to Earth's her cooling face, 

While airs across the dark outblow: 
Then rocked on some glad blossom's breast, 

Thou dreamest to rest. 

When Summer wanes to Autumn's age. 
And come the days of fate and rage, 

happy Humming Bee ! 
Then wilt thou sink to wintry sleep, 
When storms are hoarse along the deep. 

In hushed tranquillity. 
No more wilt wind thy subtle horn 
By dreamy eve or misty morn, 
When trees are leafless, pastures shorn. 

Ah me ! ah me ! 
Could we, like thee, go down the days 
Of summer hush to autumn haze. 



116 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Housing, with what we built before, 
The gold of all our memory^s store 
And garnered thought ; 
So when the bleak December's hate 
Beat round the bastions of our fate, 
We, wrapt in wealth of honeyed dreams 
Of kindlier visions, far-off streams. 
Might heed it not. 



A Wood Lyric 

Into the stilly woods I go. 

Where the shades are deep and the wind-flowers 

blow. 
And the hours are dreamy and lone and long. 
And the power of silence is greater than song. 
Into the stilly woods I go. 
Where the leaves are cool and the wind-flowers blow. 

When I go into the stilly woods, 

And know all the flowers in their sweet, shy hoods. 

The tender leaves in their shimmer and sheen 

Of darkling shadow, diaphanous green. 

In those haunted halls where my footstep falls. 

Like one who enters cathedral walls, 

A spirit of beauty floods over me. 

As over a swimmer the waves of the sea. 

That strengthens and glories, refreshens and fills, 

Till all mine inner heart wakens and thrills 

With a new and a glad and a sweet delight. 

And a sense of the infinite out of sight. 

Of the great unknown that we may not know. 

But only feel with an inward glow 

When into the great, glad woods we go. 



AN AUGUST REVERIE 117 

life-worn brothers, come with me 

Into the wood's hushed sanctity, 

Where the great, cool branches are heavy with June, 

A.nd the voices of summer are strung in tune; 

Come with me, heart out-worn, 

Or spirit whom life's brute-struggles have torn, 

Come, tired and broken and wounded feet. 

Where the walls are greening, the floors are sweet. 

The roofs are breathing and heaven's airs meet. 



An August Reverie 

There is an autumn sense subdues the air. 
Though it is August and the season still 

A part of summer, and the woodlands fair. 
I hear it in the humming of the mill, 

I feel it in the rustling of the trees. 

That scarcely shiver in the passing breeze. 

'Tis but a touch of Winter ere his time, 

A presaging of sleep and icy death, 
When skies are rich and fields are in their prime, 

And heaven and earth commingle in a breath: — • 
When hazy airs are stirred with gossamer wings, 
And in shorn fields the shrill cicada sings. 

So comes the slow revolving of the year. 
The glory of nature ripening to decay. 

When in those paths, by which, through loves austere. 
All men and beasts and blossoms find their way, 

By steady easings of the Spirit's dream. 

From sunlight past the pallid starlight's beam. 



118 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

JSTor should the spirit sorrow as it passes, 
Declining slowly by the heights it came ; 

We are but brothers to the birds and grasses, 
In our brief coming and our end the same : 

And though we glory, godlike in our day, 

Perchance some kindred law their lives obey. 

There are a thousand beauties gathered round: 

The sound of waters falling over-night. 
The morning scents that steam from the fresh 
ground. 
The hair-like streaming of the morning light 
Through early mists and dim, wet woods where 

brooks 
Chatter, half-seen, down under mossy nooks. 

The ragged daisy starring all the fields. 
The buttercup abrim with pallid gold, 

The thistle and burr-flowers hedged with prickly 
shields. 
All common weeds the draggled pastures hold. 

With shriveled pods and leaves, are kin to me. 

Like-heirs of earth and her maturity. 

They speak a silent speech that is their own. 
These wise and gentle teachers of the grass ; 

And when their brief and common days are flown, 
A certain beauty from the year doth pass : — 

A beauty of whose light no eye can tell. 

Save that it went; and my heart knew it well. 

I may not know each plant as some men know them, 

As children gather beasts and birds to tame; 
But I went 'mid them as the winds that blow them. 



AN AUGUST REVERIE 119 

From childhood's hour, and loved without a name. 
There is more beauty in a field of weeds 
Than in all blooms the hothouse garden breeds. 

For they are nature's children; in their faces 

I see that sweet obedience to the sky 
That marks these dwellers of the wilding places, 

Who with the season's being live and die; 
Kno.wing no love but of the wind and sun, 
Who still are nature's when their life is done. 

They are a part of all the haze-filled hours, 

The happy, happy world all drenched with light. 

The far-off, chiming click-clack of the mowers. 
And yon blue hills whose mists elude my sight; 

And they to me will ever bring in dreams 

Far mist-clad heights and brimming rain- fed streams. 

In this dream August air, whose ripened leaf, 
Pausing before it puts death's glories on, 

Deepens its green, and the half-garnered sheaf 
Gladdens the haze-filled sunlight, love hath gone 

Beyond the material, trembling like a star, 

To those sure heights where all thought's glories are. 

And Thought, that is the greatness of this earth, 
And man's most inmost being, soars and soars, 

Beyond the eye's horizon's outmost girth, 
Garners all beauty, on all mystery pores : — 

Like some ethereal fountain in its flow. 

Finds heavens where the senses may not go. 



120 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



To the Ottawa 

Out of the northern wastes, lands of winter and death, 
Eegions of ruin and age, spaces of solitude lost; 
You wash and thunder and sweep, 
And dream and sparkle and creep. 
Turbulent, luminous, large. 
Scion of thunder and frost. 

Down past woodland and waste, lone as the haunting of 
even, 
Of shriveled and wind-moaning night when Winter 
hath wizened the world ; 
Down past hamlet and town, 
By marshes, by forests that frown, 
Brimming their desolate banks. 
Your tides to the ocean are hurled. 



Glory of the Dying Day 

GLORY of the dying day ! 
That into darkness fades away. 
violet splendor ! melting down 
By river bend o'er tower and toAvn; 
glory of the dying day! 
That into darkness fades away. 

majesty of dying light! 

splendor of the gates of night I 



GLORY OF THE DYING DAY 121 

That all a molten glory glows. 

Till purple-crimson fades to rose, 

And dying, melting, outward goes 

In ashes on the even's rim 

When all the world grows faint and dim. 

silvern sound of far-off bells ! 

Einging, ringing miles away, 
Over river fields and fells, 

Bound the crimson and the grey: 
Pealing softly evening out 

As the dewy dusk comes down. 
And the great night folds about 

Eiver, woodlands, hills, and town. 

glory of the fading hills, 

Splendor of the river's breast, 
silence that the whole world fills, 

Sanctity of peaceful rest ! 
Alien from the care of day. 

Now a petalled star peeps in, 

Now nighf s choruses begin, 
Musical and far away. 

glory of the dying day, 
When my life's evening fades away, 
May it in splendid peace go down 
Like yours o'er river-bend and town; 
Not into silence blind and stark. 
Not into wintry muffled dark. 

But heralded by stars divine. 
May my life's latest evening ray 

Melt into such a night as thine. 



122 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



Walls of Green 

Walls of green where the wind and the sunlight stir, 
Eippling windows of light where the sun looks through, 
And spaces of day that widen and blur beyond. 
Out to the haze-rimmed, purpled edge of the world. 

Aisles whose pavements are etched with ghosts of moving 
Leaves and phantom branches raftered above ; 
Wind-swayed arches rocking under the blue. 
Breathing under the dim, stirred peace of the world. 

Walls of green skirting the high-built heaven. 
Dusky pines, poplars clapping their hands. 
Arching elms holding the spaces aloft, 
Under the wind-swept, argosied dome of sky. 

Walls of green. Under their luminous glooms, 
Dim and sweet, the fancies of summer lie, 
Sylvan murmurs of sun and leafy shadow. 
Music of bird and swaying of tenuous bough. 

Under here the haunted heart of summer 
Hides in its pensive veilings of tremulous green, 
Where the sky peers through and the ruddy eye of the 

sun, 
Letting the world, remote, and its roar go by. 

Here is the realm of fancy, the poet's land. 
This house of breathing leaves and summer and sun ; 
Where the eye is keen for beauty, the ear intuned, 
And the hushed heart glad for silence and slumber and 
dreams. 



ODE TO SILENCE 123 

And here, chance now and anon when the world is 

stilled. 
And life is afar, and earth of her care swept clean, 
Do the gods come back as of old in the gold of the world. 
And the elfin creatures dance in their sunbeam dreams : 

And the high thoughts wake, and the great ones tread as 

of yore. 
In ol^n majesty under these lofty aisles, 
Where the woodshade glooms, or the gossamer sunlight 

smiles. 
In the strength of the trees or the wide, blue lift of the 

sky. 

Yea, here they come to the children of earth as of yore. 
Bringing their god-gifts, vision and beauty and lore. 
Brimming the world with the old-time effort and joy. 
And Titan moods of the old world's golden desire. 



Ode to Silence 

Thine are the inaudible harmonies that keep 
The brooding breathings of the night's glad lute. 

When in those pauses 'twixt her sleep and sleep 
All holy tunes be mute. 

All beauteous seasons thou dost guard and bless. 

The tremulous dawn, hushed noon and cooling night, 

Earth, air and ocean thy dim palaces 
Filled with divine delight. 

The fathomless wells of heaven's deeps are thine. 
Thou watchest over night's infinitudes. 



124 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

The starry vast, within whose chant divine 
No dissonant chord intrudes. 

Thine are those oceans, dim, untenanted. 
The unprescient homes of pregnancies to be, 

Filling the lonely realms of mighty dread 
With formless majesty. 

Thou keepest the dewy caverns of the night 
About majestic risings of the moon. 

When over the breathing woods her phosphor light 
Eises to silvern noon. 

Thou lovest those lonely avenues of light 
In the sun-kindled woods at early morn. 

Upon the rosy rim of fading night 
And cloudy meadows shorn ; 

Filling the joyous airs with summer fraught, 
And morning's slopes with dewy odors bland ; 

Here with glad Fancy and slow-winged Thought 
Thou wanderest hand in hand. 

Thou boldest those intervals of peace that dwell 
About the caverned shores of ocean furled, 

When the long midnight hush or noonday swell 
Slumbers about the world. 

But dearest of all thou lovest that pensive liour^ 
That holy hour about the fringe of eve. 

When sunset dreams in lonely woods have power 
Imaginings to weave; — 

When all the sunset world seems ages old 
In sad romance and achings of dead wrong. 

And all the beauty of life is poignant gold 
In the hermit thrush's song. 



ODE TO THUNDER CAPE 125 

Then down the long, dim memories of old woods 

Facing forever the far-westering sun, 
I'd dream for aye through hallowed solitudes 

Where magic echoes run; — 

Seeking the majesty of peace wherein thou hidest, 
Those golden rivers of being without alloy ; 

Knowing the infinite of dream is where thou bidest, 
Thou and that calm joy. 



Ode to Thunder Cape* 

Storm-beaten cliff, thou mighty cape of thunder; 
Eock-Titan of the north, whose feet the waves beat 

under ; 
Cloud-reared, mist-veiled, to all the world a wonder, 
Shut out in thy wild solitude asunder, 

Thunder Cape, thou mighty Cape of Storms ! 

About thy base, like woe that naught assuages. 
Throughout the years the wild lake raves and rages ; 
One after one, time closes up weird pages ; 
But firm thou standest, unchanged, through the ages, 
Thunder Cape, thou awful Cape of Storms ! 

Upon thy ragged front the storm's black anger 
Like eagle clings, amid the elements' clangor: 
About thee feels the lake's soft sensuous languor; 
But dead alike to loving and to anger. 

Thou towerest bleak, mighty Cape of Storms ! 

Year in, year out, the summer rain's soft beating, 
Thy front hath known, the winter's snow and sleeting; 

* Thunder Cape, an immense cliff of basaltic rock, thirteen hundred feet high, 
guards the entrance to Thunder Bay, Lake Superior. 



126 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

But unto each thou givest contemptuous greeting. 
These hurt thee not tlirough seasons fast and fleeting; 
proud, imperious, rock-ribbed Cape of Storms ! 

In August nights, when on thine under beaches 
The lake to caverns time-weird legend teaches, 
And moon-pearled waves to shadowed shores send 

speeches ; 
Far into heaven thine awful darkness reaches, 

O'ershadowing night ; thou ghostly Cape of Storms ! 

In wild October, when the lake is booming 
Its madness at thee, and the north is dooming 
The season to fiercest hate, still unconsuming. 
Over the strife, thine awful front is looming; 
Like death in life, thou awful Cape of Storms ! 

Across thy rest the wild bee's noonday humming. 
And sound of martial hosts to battle drumming, 
Are one to thee — no date knows thine incoming; 
The earliest years belong to thy life's summing, 
ancient rock, thou aged Cape of Storms ! 

thou so old, within thy sage discerning. 
What sorrows, hates, what dead past loves still-burning, 
Couldst thou relate, thine ancient pages turning; 
thou, who seemest ever new lores learning, 
unf orgetting, wondrous Cape of Storms ? 



tell me what wild past lies here enchanted : 
What borders thou dost guard, what regions haunted ? 
What type of man a little era flaunted. 
Then passed and slept? tell me thou undaunted. 
Thou aged as eld, mighty Cape of Storms ! 

speak, if thou canst speak, what cities sleeping? 
What busy streets? what laughing and wfcat weeping? 



TO THE RIDEAU RIVER 127 

What vanished deeds and hopes like dust upheaping, 
Hast thou long held within thy silent keeping ? 
wise old cape, thou rugged Cape of Storms ! 

These all have passed, as all that's living passes ; 
Our thoughts they wither as the centuries' grasses, 
That bloom and rot in bleak, wild lake morasses : 
But still thou loomest where Superior glasses 
Himself in surge and sleep, Cape of Storms ! 

And thou wilt stay when we and all our dreaming 
Lie low in dust. The age's last moon-beaming 
Will shed on thy wild front its final gleaming ; 
For last of all that's real and all that's seeming, 
Thou still wilt linger, mighty Cape of Storms ! 



To the Rideau River 

Across the peace of all the night's great healing, 
Beneath the silence of the darFs hushed deep, 

A phosphorescent, ghostly spirit stealing. 
You softly slide, a sleep within a sleep. 

You slip and shine by boughs that bend to kiss you, 
You dream by curved banks of shimmering green; 

And where you swerve the alien meadows miss you. 
But happy are the banks you glide between. 

You drift, a solace to the great woods under, 
Wimpling wide in many a watery moon ; 

And when you sing, the hours, in soft-eyed wonder. 
Lean, finger on lip, entranced by your tune. 

Out by dim, hazy shores, in reedy shallows, 
The drowsy cattle sun them in the heat; 



128 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

And, far from woody slopes and ragged fallows, 
A lazy wind goes loitering in the wheat. 

You fill the summer with your magic, chanting 
Your sleepy music out by field and fell ; 

And spirits elusive in your bosom haunting 
Sleep like the genie in the Arabian well. 

In low green capes, by country ways descending, 
Where your tides wind by many a braided shore, 

The great cool elms, the heaven and water blending. 
Mirror their ghosts within thy shimmering floor. 

By pebbly shoals whereon your tides are driven 
In silvery surge and far-heard slumbrous song, 

Your sleeping shores and the white hosts of heaven 
Hearken your tender droppings all night long. 

Where out along the dusk, all white-mist laden. 
You cradle deep in wells of azure light, — 

Like to the virgin dreams of some sweet maiden, — 
In your glad breast the million stars of night. 

Across your silver bars whereby you glisten, 
Oblivious of the throes of earth's wild mart. 

You leap and sing, and then you lie and listen. 
As if to hear the throbbing of your heart. 

Unfettered child of nature's mirth and gladness. 
Sing, sing and drift by field and country way ; 

Fill earth and men with thy divine, sweet madness. 
With glad contentment gird both night and day: 

Till care and pain one troublous dream dissolving, 
Across the splendor of thy misty bars; 

We only know the glorious day revolving. 
Night's majesty, and her eternal stars. 



THE WIND DANCER 129 



The Wind Dancer 

When ripened Summer dreams and sleeps. 

And her hushed silence teems 
With golden gleam of mystic drowse 

And silvern trance of dreams; 

And all the woods are held in moods 

Of slumber sunbeam spun, 
There is an elfin dancer, light, 

Who dances in the sun. 

And stands and claps his shining hands 

And bids the mirth move on 
Of somo invisible, mystic rout 

The slumbrous day upon. 

And they, the revellers, dim, unseen, 
Who chase his phantom mood ; 

Perchance the naiads of the stream, 
The dryads of the wood. 

For when a wind-breath wakes the world 

And stirs each drowsed tree, 
Like magic silver works his bow 

In fiddlings merrily. 

And all his elfin revellers dance 

By glint of wood and stream. 
Till all the drowsed day about 

Goes dancing in his dream. 

And when in shrouded moonlight glooms 
The woodland sighs and frets, 



130 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Along the snowy dream he shakes 
His silvern castanets. 

Till phantom creatures of the night, 
Shy satyrs, gnomes and fauns 

Foot to his music mad and sweet 
Along the mossy lawns. 

He is the master of the mirth 
Of field and stream and tree; 

And of the dreamers of the wood. 
The lord of revels, he. 

Till Summer and her dream depart 
And leaf and gleam be done, 

He holds the whole world's laughing heart. 
This dancer in the sun. 



Winter 

Over these wastes, these endless wastes of white, 
Bounding about far, lonely regions of sky, 

Winter the wild-tongued cometh with clamorous might; 
Deep-sounding and surgent, his armies of storm sweep 

by, 

Wracking the skeleton woods and opens that lie 
Far to the seaward reaches that thunder and moan, 
Where barrens and mists and beaches forever are lone. 

Morning shrinks closer to night, and nebulous noon 
Hangs, a dull lanthorn, over the windings of snows; 

And like a pale beech-leaf fluttering upward, the moon 
Out of the short day wakens and blossoms and grows. 



WINTER 131 

And builds her wan beauty like to the ghost of a rose 
Over the soundless silences, shrunken, that dream 
Their prisoned deathliness under the gold of her beam. 

Wide is the arch of the night, blue spangled with fire. 
From wizened edge to edge of the shriveled-up earth, 

Where the chords of the dark are as tense as the strings 
of a lyre 
Stfiung by the fingers of silence ere sound had birth. 
With far-off, alien echoes of morning and mirth ; 

That reach the tuned ear of the spirit, beaten upon 

By the soundless tides of the wonder and glory of dawn. 

The stars have faded and blurred in the spaces of night, 
And over the snow-fringed edges wakens the morn. 

Pallid and heatless, lifting its lustreless light 

Over the skeleton woodlands and stretches forlorn ; 
Touching with pallor the forests, storm-haggard and 
torn: 

Till out of the earth's edge the winter-god rises acold. 

And strikes on the iron of the month with finger of gold. 

Then down the whole harp of the morning a vibration 

rings, 

Thrilling the heart of the dull earth with throbbings 

and dreams 

Of far-blown odors and music of long-vanished Springs ; 

Till the lean, stalled cattle low for the lapping of 

streams. 
And the clamorous cock, to the south, where his dung- 
hill steams. 
Looks the sun in the eye, and prophesies, hopeful and 

clear, 
The stir in the breast of the wrinkled, bleak rime of the 
year. 

9 



132 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



The Spring Spirit 

I, POOR Satyr in the glade, 
Saw a wonder, half afraid, 
When the year at leafy time 
Held all essences at prime; 
Knew a miracle of dream 
By wide sward and azure gleam. 
Soft upon a breathing day, 
"When all earth, expectant, lay, 
Worn of Winter, answering 
To the vast awakening, 
Where the woodland yearned afar 
To a dream of drifting star. 

When the lonely days were done, 
And those magic ones had spun 
All the woodland in a lace 
Over coy earth's hidden face; 
Knew a presence like a wind. 
Soft at Summer, or a kind 
Dream of dawning round the sky, 
Eosy over hillroofs high. 

Saw a vision, half a mist, 
Pearl and glowing, cloudland kissed. 
Saw a vision, heard a voice, 
Bidding all earth's kin rejoice, 
Like as leaves are lightly stirred 
By a passing wind or bird. 

Held a vision of a face 
Peering out of purple lace, 



IN THE STRENGTH OF THE TREES 133 

Subtle weft of morns and eves, 
Fair as Summer when she grie\cs 
O'er her tender deaths of love, 
Bending burgeoning earth above; 
Lips of beauty, eyes of dream, 
In whose opalescent gleam 
All the hopes of earth and sky 
And visions sweet of life did lie. 
In this wonder- Joy I grew 
Swift to mood of bird and blue. 
Sweet, this dream of life to scan. 
Love, immortal — baptized, man. 



In the Strength of the Trees 

Lorn, hooded woodlands, wintry, bare, 
Against the wild November sky; 

With what hushed patience, in your care. 
You let the biting blast go by. 

It roars like madness round the world. 
And strikes you like a shoreward sea. 

Soon far its pinions rude are hurled. 
And you, erect and free. 

Beneath the comfort of your sere, 
Bleak dream of loud November woe. 

The frail, fair children of the year 

Are cradled in your heart's warm glow. 

There sheltered 'neath your iron might. 
That fronts the icy wolfhound's breath. 

The hopes of all the year lie light. 
In frosty dream of death. 



134 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

I, too, have felt the wintry rage 
And tooth of rude, unkindly fate ; 

Would that I might its blasts engage, 
Like you, possess my soul and wait : — 

Like you, in patience, meet the storms 
Of life's November's surge and stress ; 

Strong 'gainst its ill of iron alarms. 
Tender toward its great helplessness. 

So build my life like yours above 
Earth's dream of frail futurity, 

In all that godlike strength that love 
Ordained that it should be. 



Autumn 

Season of languorous gold and hazy drouth, 

Of nature's beauty ripened to the core. 
When over fens far-calling birds wing south, 
Filling the air with lonesome dreams of yore. 
And memories that haunt but come no more ; 
Maiden of veiled eyes and sunny mouth, 
Dreaming between hushed heat and frosted lands ; 
With fire-mists in thine eyes, and red leaves in thy 
hands. 

Spirit of Autumn, siren of all the year. 

Who dost my soul with glamouries entwine; 

As some old trunk, deep in the forest drear. 
Is gloried by some crimson, clinging vine; 
So thou dost fill my heart with haunted wine. 

When in the still, glad days by uplands sere, 



A UTUMN 135 

With slow-drawn pace, I seek thy slumbrous moods, 
In thy hushed, dreamy haunts of fields and skies and 
woods. 

How often in the still, rich frosted days, 

Down the slow hours of some tranced afternoon. 
Have my feet wandered in a mad, sweet maze, 
Hunting the wind that, like some haunting tune, 
peopled with memories all the great, gold swoon 
Of rustling woodlands, streams and leafy ways, 
Ever eluding, fluting, sweet, before 
Fading to rest at last in gold-green leafy core. 

Far out beside some great, hill-cradled stream. 

Winding along in sinuous blue for miles. 
By tented elms, in fields that sleep and dream. 

Low marsh-lands where the warm sun slopes and 

smiles. 
Where through the haze the harsh grasshopper files 
His rasping note, the pallid asters gleam. 
And golden-rod flames in the smoky light. 
While far, blue fading hills in mists elude my sight. 

Or out in maple woods where companies 

Of sombre trunks lift the soft light between, 
And little sunbeams steal with ruddy eyes. 
Sifting adown the canopies of green ; 
Spirit of sadness, here you move unseen 
Down tented avenues where the long light lies 
From morn till even, through the silent hours. 
Where over all the day frets through in sunny showers. 

On silent nights, grey mists creep near the ground. 
And airs are keen and stars grow sharp and clear, 



136 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

And phantom frosts steal in and make no sound 
Down the long, haunted river, bleak and drear. 
Biting with death the sedges dank and sere. 
And ever the wan moon rises large and round 
Over the woodlands, flooding with iced dream 
The far-hushed, ghostly face of wood and field anrl 
stream. 

On frosty mornings in the crimsoning woods ; 

Or where the long, low grassy meadows shine, 
Wimpling and steaming out through hazy moods 
Of dewy glories to the far sky-line ; 
And pearly brooks, a company divine. 
Go, softly chattering, under smoky hoods; 
I love to walk abroad and con with you 
Dream thoughts that are most sad and beautiful and 
true. 



The Journey 

The wind of the day blows downward 
From the moor and the far lone height ; 

And sinks to rest on the brooding breast 
Of the hushed and mothering night. 

The river sweeps from the mountain 

To find its peace in the sea ; 
But 0, my heart, thou must yearn on 

To all eternity. 

Eestless, unsatisfied, longing, 

Evermore doomed to roam ; 
For thou hast gone on a journey long 

To those hills of the soul's far home. 



THE MESSAGE OF NIGHT 137 



The Message of Night 

I STAND beneath the night's wide vast, 
The awful curtains, dim, out-rolled ; 

And know time but a tempest blast. 
And life a thing the hand may hold — 

« 

A thing the Nubian, Dark, may shut 

In his closed palm-grasp, black and rude. 

Like dust in a kernel of a nut 
'Mid vasts of night's infinitude. 

And Eeason whispers : Why debate 

A moment's thought, why breathe this breath? 
For all are gone, the low, the great ; 

And mighty lord of all is Death, 

Yea, Egypt built her ruined dream. 
And Greece knew beauty's perfect bliss. 

Then Science fanned her taper gleam — 
And all for this, and all for this : 

That when the fires of time burned out. 
The earth a barren ball should roll. 

With wrinkled winter wrapt about, 
And night eterne from pole to pole. 

And all the dreams of seers and kings, 
The pomps and pageants of the past. 

The loves and vain imaginings, 
Ground into glacial dust at last. 



138 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Ah! no such creed, my soul, for thee. 
As, underneath the night's wide bars, 

They speak with love's infinity — 
God's wondrous angels of the stars. 

And something in my heart — some light. 
Some splendor, science cannot weigh — 

Beats round the shores of this dim night 
The surges of a mightier day. 

Though all the loves of those who loved 

Be vanished into empty air, 
Though all the dreams of ages proved 

But wrecks of beautiful despair. 

Though all the dust of those who fought 
Be scattered to the midnight's main. 

No noble life was lived for naught ; 
No martyr death was died in vain. 



The Dream Divine 

Who hath no moods for beauty doth not know 
The inward greatness of this moving world. 
My heart was troubled with the care of life 
And mine own driven nature, when I came 
Out to a place where 'mid the roofs of trees, 
A single gleam, the evening sky shone through 
In simple beauty, and it seemed as though 
Once more as in the child-like olden days 
When earth's folk dreamed God's windows 

opened wide 
And let in heaven. Thus it seemed to me. 



TITAN 139 

For on my soul a sweetness and a calm 
Fell like a mantle ; and the joy of one 
Who hearkens to inward music; all the world 
Seemed in an instant changed : the garish streets 
Were no more common ; even the woes of men 
Assumed a greatness, and mine own dread care 
Grew dim, remote, a part of yesterday. 
It is a marvel how this magic works, 
That nature hath such influence over men, 
To raise them from the common, and redeem 
The soul from sordid evils, lift to beauty. 
Build o'er our life a splendid weft of dream. 
By one small rift of dawn or night divine. 



Tit 



an 



Titan — he loves a breezy hill 

Away above us in the clouds. 
Where sun and wind are never still. 

And fold it round with misty shrouds. 

He loves the great world stretching out 
Into dim sky ; he loves the flowers 

And trees, the brooks that laugh and shout; 
And often he will sit for hours 

And gaze into the distant rim 

Of all things made of earth and air. 

That rounds the horizon vague and dim. 
Until his great, deep eyes do wear 

A look of awe, in thoughts of One, 
Invisible, Eternal, Great, 



140 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Who built from out the burning sun 
This glorious world with all its state. 

And through the clouds, that like a crown 
Of snow encircle his hill's great head, 

Sometimes the sun in peering down 
Will find him sleeping on his bed 

Of clover lawn, with blossoms that strew 
Themselves like love, and round him wave ; 

And all the night the winds blow through 
His dreams as through a cave. 

Brawny, huge-limbed, in frame and mind 
True type of man, in heart a boy, 

Wlio loves the music of the wind, 
Who yet is innocent in joy. 

Whose heart is not a cavern of doubt 

And dark foul hates, with passions rife; 

His dreams are all of flowers about. 
His life is part of nature's life. 

Though great in strength of manly form. 
His heart is truest tenderness ; 

Strong as the spirit of the storm. 

Soft as the rain-drops when they press 

With cooling lips the parched flowers 

That peer like young birds from their nest. 

Mouths gaping for the much-loved showers. 
That cool and nourish Nature's breast. 



TITAN 141 

And there I know he sits at dawn, 
Fresh from his cave of sleep, with eyes 

Clear as the sky above, the lawn 
Eesplendent with a thousand dyes. 

A line of red that lights the east 

And widens over sky and sea 
In purple and gold, and snowy fleeced, 

4Vhere mountain peaks loom high and free. 

And when pale May with tears the earth 

Has watered, and the rosier June 
To balm and bloom has given birth. 

And strung the world to rarest tune, 

Then I shall hie to Titan's hill 
Where far above among the clouds 

The sun and wind are never still. 

But fold it round with misty shrouds. 

And there 'mid lawns and grassy nooks, 
The great world stretching far below. 

Here, far from men and care and books. 
Where only streams of nature flow. 

And he shall teach me, he who drinks 
Where nature's fountains brimming run, 

Who forged in thought the burning links 
That bind the great zones of the sun. 

Whose nightly torches are the stars 

That look with ever-trusting eyes 
Across the midnight's gloomy bars, 

And he will make me strong and wise. 



142 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



Morning 

When I behold how out of ruined night 
Filled with all weirds of haunted ancientness. 
And dreams and phantasies of pale distress, 
Is builded, beam by beam, the splendid light, 
The opalescent glory, gem bedight, 
Of dew-emblazoned morning; when I know 
Such wondrous hopes, such luminous beauties 

grow 
From out earth's shades of sadness and affright ; 

0, then, my heart, amid thy questioning ffear, 
Dost thou not whisjjer : He who buildeth thus 
From wrecks of dark such wonders at his will. 
Can re-create from out death's night for us 
The marvels of a morning gladder still 
Than ever trembled into beauty here? 



The Earth-Spirit 

Down these golden uplands, I 
Move with sunny winds and sky. 
Where the ghosts of waters are. 
To the gates of dusk and star. 

And I know that as I go. 
She whose bosom is the snow 
Of the birch and aspen tree. 
Dreams these sunny dreams with me. 

She whose glance and gleam of hair 
Are the ruddy spinning, rare, 



THE END OF THE FURROW 143 

Of the gold glint of the sun 
In the wood when day is done ; 

She whose inner speech is heard 
In the hush of wind and bird, 
And whose soul is as a star 
Cradled where the hill-lakes are. 



Rododactulos 

The night blows outward in a mist, 
And all the world the sun has kissed. 

Along the golden rim of sky, 
A thousand snow-piled vapors lie. 

And by the wood and mist-clad stream, 
The Maiden Morn stands still to dream. 



The End of tlie Furrow 

When we come to the end of the furrow, 
When our last day's work is done. 

We will drink of the long red shaft of light 
That slants from the westering sun. 

We will turn from the field of our labor. 
Prom the warm earth glad and brown. 

And wend our feet up that village street. 
And with our folk lie down. 

Yea, after the long toil, surcease, 

Eest to the hearts that roam. 
When we join in the mystic silence of eve. 

The glad procession home. 



144 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



The Pageantry of Death 

Once more, once more, with fateful sombre tread, 
The wheeling year brings splendid Autumn in. 

Hushed with sad dreams of memory and the dead, 
And icy touch of Winter sere and thin : 

Slowly with thoughtful pace the hours go round 

While, leaf by leaf, the year slips faltering to the 
ground. 

With what a glory lifts the morning light 

O'er mists and dreams beyond the dripping woods, 

Where ambering brooks steal under wakening night. 
Mirroring in mists the year's bright moods 

Of morning, peace and life and leafy glow ; 

Soon, soon, too sadly soon, ghost-wound in ghostly snow. 

Down past the rich, ripe splendors of the year, 
The glad days pale and sadden to the Fall, 

Loosening, as memory lets go tear by tear, 
The sweet old thoughts, the dreams beyond recall; 

The splendid hopes, the joys, the golden gleam. 

That now fade out in mists beyond the hills of dream. 

And now when nights grow old and days decline. 
And veiled September glories all the world 

With those glad lights of Autumn's hues divine, 
By hill and stream in azure vapors furled, 

Over the earth a solemn rapture flows 

Of death's sad doomful march where all that's mortal 
goes. 

To him who, wandering o'er the upland fields, 

Or by some noonday shrunken slumbering stream, 



THE PAGEANTRY OF DEATH 145 

Where reverie her sweetest visions yields 

In realms of inward thought and reverent dream, 
There comes a sense of sadness undefined, 
That speaks in each dead leaf, or whispers doAvn the 
wind. 

All day far out across the azure hills. 

The splendid ruined woods all wrecked with rains, 
Or river reaches, where the distance fills. 

With wine of softness, all the haze-lit plains ; 
And lonely uplands where some garrulous jay 
Eeverberates his note along the lonesome day; 

Here 'mid these austere glories of the year. 

The spirit of lofty sadness dwells alone ; 
Where, hushed, the lorn heart grieves without a tear, 

In this high house where winds like ocean moan ; 
Or wild-blown sunsets, where bleak woodlands sway 
About the dying borders of the splendid desolat? day. 

So fades September. Down each country lane, 

Where withered the summer in the late August days, 

And weeds, once radiant, drenched of wind and rain, 
Now bronzed and ragged, linger along the ways; 

Here aster and gentian lift their fringed blue. 

Like some sweet second summer, the haze-filled sunlight 
through. 

Near and afar by wood and field and stream. 
There sleeps an eerie mantle of misty light. 

Transforming all, building this mid-day dream, 
Like some ghost-phantom of the pale moonlight; 

Where all the distance islanded in a breath. 

Seems some illusion built from out the fogs of death. 



146 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Soon, soon, too soon, this pageantry will pass; 

And all tlie gaudy garments the world puts on, 
Of crimsoning leaf, and mists and bronzed grass. 

Like some magician's dream, be vanished and gone; 
Leaving the year a hollow iron urn. 
Wherein no more love's fires do glimmer and leap and 
burn. 

Nor should we sorrow more than sadness ought, 
Nor grieve to tread this abbey of life's years; 

Is there not splendid beauty in the thought 

That we have such great endings of our tears ; — 

That very Nature puts her glories on, 

In these sad haunted days, for all her bright ones gone. 

Even as we dream, in maddening rage doth rouse 
Old lorn October, storm bloused. Autumn blown; 

Eoaring like ocean upon this ruined house, 

Shaking in thunders its desolate splendors down ; 

Till not one leaf goes shuddering in its flight, 

Wliere build in icy caverns the windy fires of night. 



An October Evening 

The woods are loaggard and lonely, 
The skies are hooded for snow, 

The moon is cold in heaven. 
And the grasses are sere below. 

The bearded swamps are breathing 
A mist from meres afar, 

And grimly the Great Bear circles 
Under the pale Pole Star. 



TO THE BLACKBERRY 147 

There is never a voice in heaven, 

Nor ever a sound on earth. 
Where the spectres of winter are rising 

Over the night's wan girth. 

There is slumber and death in the silence, 

There is hate in the winds so keen ; 
And the flash of the north's great sword-blade 
• Circles its cruel sheen. 

The world grows aged and wintry, 

Love's face peaked and white; 
And death is kind to the tired ones 

Who sleep in the north to-night. 



To the Blackberry 

I FIND thee by the country-side. 

With angry mailed thorn; 
When first with dreamy woods and skiea 

The summer time is l3orn. 

By every fence and woodland path 
Thy milk-white blossom blows ; 

In lonely haunts of mist and dream, 
The summer airs enclose. 

And when the freighted August days 

Far into autumn lean, 
Sweet, luscious, on the laden branch, 

Thy ripened fruit is seen. 

10 



148 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Dark gypsy of the glowing year. 
Child of the sun and rain. 

While dreaming by thy tangled path 
There comes to me again 

The memory of a happy boy, 
Barefooted, freed from school, 

Wlio plucked your rich lip-staining fruit 
By road-ways green and cool, 

And tossed in glee his ragged cap. 

With laughter to the sky; 
Oblivious in the glow of youth 

How the mad world went by; 

Nor cared in realms of summer time. 
By haunts of bough and vine. 

If Nicholas lost the Volga, 
Or Bismarck held the Ehine. 

time when shade with sun was blent. 

So like an April shower. 
Life has its flower and thorn and fruit. 

But thou wert all its flower. 

When every day Nepenthe lent. 
To drown its deepest sorrow. 

And evening skies but prophesied 
A glorious skied to-morrow. 

0, long gone days of sunlit youth, 
I'd live through years of pain, 

Once more life's fate of thorn and fruit 
To dream your flower again. 



A WINTER'S NIGHT 149 

Before the Dawn 

One hour before the flush of dawn 
That all the rosy daylight weaves. 

Here in my bed, far overhead 
I hear the swallows in the eaves. 

I cannot see, but well I loiow 

That out around the duslvy grey, 
Across dark lakes and voiced streams. 

The blind, dumb vapors feel their way. 

And here and there a star looks down 

Out of the fog that holds the sea 
In its embrace, while up the lands 

Some cock makes music lustily. 

And out within the dreamy woods. 
Or in some clover blossomed lawn. 

The blinking robin pipes his mate 
To wake the music of the dawn. 



A Winter's Night 

Shadowy white. 
Over the fields are the sleeping fences. 

Silent and still in the fading light. 
As the wintry night commences. 

The forest lies 
On the edge of the heavens, bearded and brown : 

He pulls still closer his cloak, and sighs, 
As the evening winds come down. 



150 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

The snows are wound 
As a winding sheet on the river's breast. 

And the shivering blast goes wailing round. 
As a spirit that cannot rest. 

Calm sleeping night ! 
Whose jewelled couch reflects the million stars 

That murmur silent music in their flight — - 
0, naught thy fair sleep mars. 

And all a dream — • 
Thy spangled forest in its frosty sleep. 

Thy pallid moon that sheds its misty beam 
O'er waters dead and deep. 



Dawn in the June Woods 

When over the edge of night 
The stars pale one by one, 

!And out of his streams of light 
Kising, the great red sun 

Lifteth his splendors up 
Over the hush of the world. 

And draining night's ebon cup, 
Leaveth some stars impearled. 

Still on its crystal rim. 
Fading like bubbles away, 

As out of their cloud-meadows dim, 
The dawn winds blow in this way; 



SEPTEMBER IN THE LA URENTIAN HILLS 151 

Then bathed in cool dewy wells, 

Old longings of life renew, 
Till here in these morning dells 

The dreamings of earth come true : 

As up each sim-jewelled slope. 

Over the night-hallowed land. 
Wonder and Beauty and Hope 
• Walk silently hand in hand. 



September in the Laurentian Hills 

Alkeady Winter in his sombre round, 

Before his time, hath touched these hills austere 
With lonely flame. Last night, without a sound, 

The ghostly frost walked out by wood and mere. 
And now the sumach curls his frond of fire. 

The aspen-tree reluctant drops his gold, 
And down the gullies the North's wild vibrant lyre 

Eouses the bitter armies of the cold. 

O'er this short afternoon the night draws down, 
With ominous chill, across these regions bleak; 

Wind-beaten gold, the sunset fades around 
The purple loneliness of crag and peak, 

Leaving the world an iron house wherein 

Nor love nor life nor hope hath ever been. 



152 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



Ind 



lan oummer 



Along the line of smoky hills 
The crimson forest stands, 

And all the day the blue-jay calls 
Throughout the autumn lands. 



*^&^ 



Now by the brook the maple leans 

With all his glory spread. 
And all the sumachs on the hills 

Have turned their green to red. 

Now by great marshes wrapt in mist. 
Or past some river's mouth. 

Throughout the long, still autumn day 
Wild birds are flying south. 



Song 

When the morning lifts in light 
Over misty wood and stream. 

And from heaven's azure height 
Falls the silence like a dream; — - 

Then the joy-bird on his tree 

Pipes of love and hope to me: 
(Wake up rose of morning.) 

When the noonday lies in light 
Over woodland hill and deep, 

Fleecy cloudlands furled in flight. 
Over fields enmeshed in sleep : — 



AUTUMN LEAVES 153 

Then the sad-bird pipes to me 
Songs of days that used to be: 
(Ked my rose of dreaming.) 

When the evening dies in light 
Down the purple miles of dream. 

Lost in jewelled shoals of night, 
Where a myriad glories gleam : — 

Then the death-bird pipes to me 

Prom the shadow of his tree : — 

(Fold my flower for sleeping.)^ 



Autumn Leaves 

Bright gloried children of the year's late splendors. 

By the wild night-wind strewn; — 
Not like mere hues of some poor painter's colors 

Upon a palette thrown : — 

But something fairer, gladder, greater, fashioned 

By that dread, unseen hand 
Of Him who loosens His storms, unfolds His 
blossoms ; — 

The might of sea and land. 

On this grey autumn morn of haunted sadness, 

All wrecked of wind and rain ; 
You give to me a glad ecstatic vision, 

A high exquisite pain. 

Glad leaves, all ruddy, russet, green and golden. 

Across my pathway hurled, 
You bring a dream of nature's rarest beauty 

Into this barren world. 



154 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

And through my heart there glows a sense of greatness, 

Of visions, — splendid, vast; 
Given by you, glad children of the woodland, 

Upon my spirit cast. 

iWinnowed by winds of night, far-blown and shaken. 
Storm-lashed, where great boughs swayed ; — 

As I walk here, you seem a magic pavement 
By the wild midnight laid. 

And with an inward sense of mystic beauty 

That stirs and thrills my blood. 
You lift me to a higher, truer kinship. 

Bright brothers of the wood. 



Bleaiac an^ /iDemorial Derse 



VICTORIA 167 



Victoria 

EoLL out earth's muffled drums, let sable streamers 

flow, 
And all Britannia's might assume her panoply of woe! 
Love's holiest star is gone; 

Wind wide the funeral wreath ; 
For she, our mightiest, hath put on 

The majesty of death. 
Eoll forth the notes of woe, 
Let the baleful trumpets blow 
A titan nation's titan, heartfelt throe ; 

'Mid age and storm and night and blinding 

snow. 
Death, the pale tyrant, lays our loftiest low. 

Like some fair mask of queenly sleep she lies, 

The mists of centuries in her sightless eyes, 

This august woman; greatest of earth's great; 

Who ruled this splendor, held this Empire's fate, 

And built this purity and white of love's supreme estate. 

Low, like a lily broken on its stem, 
Passed all her glory, filched her diadem, 
She sleeps at His weird bidding who saith, Peace ! 
And all the loud world's mighty roar is hushed in love's 

surcease. 
Song is an echo ; lore an idle tale ; 
Love but the yearning of white lips that wail; 
Woe but the weeping of wild autumn rain ; 
Power but the transient gust of angered main. 
Thus fades all glory. But her lofty life, 
That long gold summer as mother, monarch, wife ; 



158 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

These bide and stay, 'mid wrecks that pass away. 
Beyond the mutability of our poor day, 
To live when power is swept, 

And pomp but clay in clay. 
Greater than greatness, stronger than iron power, 
That makes earth's Neros grim, her Caesars dower; 
Hers was the gift to girdle isles of peace 
With woman's nobleness and love's increase. 

The century rang with might of sword and flame 
And coarser moods. Amid its blight she came. 
And love grew purer, life a holier name ; 
Eeligion graver, deeper; happiness, 
A part of character to aid and bless ; 
And softer grew life's heart of bitterness. 
Man's faith grew godlier, chivalry arose, 
With virtue white as winter's winnowed snows ; 
And art and song awoke from sorrow's long repose. 

From heart of suffering life and conscience went 
On higher dreams of love and action bent ; 
Self-sacrifice from her pure convents came. 
And sweetened life of half its bitter blame ; 
Till cynic scorn crept out in love's 

White banishment of shame. 

So calm she sleeps in her great southern isle. 
Wrapt round in silence drear of stormy death. 
No more for her wide earth or heaven will smile, 
Or southern ocean breathe his balmy breath; 
No more for her the love of child and friend. 
Memory of old happiness gone before. 
The calm, serene, of life's long peaceful end; 
Sweet day, glad nigiit, for her, no more ! no more ! 



VICTORIA 159 

The rose of England, red, will burst in bloom ; 
The lark in meadows rise as she hath risen; 
The heart of springtime break its wintry gloom, 
And life its iron prison; 

And far in Scotland, loved of her and him. 

Her nearest, dearest; laverocks will sing; 

And loch and mountain clothe their glories, dim. 

With joy of leaf and wing — 

But she no more will mourn her warriors dead. 

Eoll forth the muffled drum ! The mighty will 

That worked for others, brain and heart are still ; 

The august spirit, queenly soul is fled ! 

Death, king of monarchs as of meaner men. 

Thundered her palace, o'er the drawbridge crept. 

Filched life's rare coffer, stole earth's pearl; and then, 

She gravely smiled and slept. 

For us remains the grief, the pain, the woe. 
The anguish, sorrow and the jjoding heart; 
For her, the mighty peace of those who go 
Forth from a nobler part. 

From all earth's shores one mighty grief is heard; 
Each zone remote, in tryst of sorrow wed; 
The Briton's love, the alien spirit stirred — 
Earth's great heart bleeding for earth's mighty dead. 

Far hid from us, in veils of love, supreme. 
She knows now, gloried, what she prayed before; 
Storming love's fortress, for that one star-beam, 
God-given to mortals wandering on this shore. 
Where earth-mists thicken into perilous night. 
She greets her august line of long and kindly might. 



160 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Wise, lofty Alfred, first of her great line 

To build those laws by which she ruled so well; 

Heroic Eichard ; and, like some Undine, 

The fated Mary, both of heaven and hell ; 

Great Edward ; Henry ; Charles of fateful death ; 

And greatest of all her high and storied line, 

Eare, great Elizabeth ! 
These greet her, ghostly, on that shadowed beach, 
Beyond our human tears and woe of human speech. 

Above all praise of ours, undying fame, 
Like sun on mountain, aureoles her white brow. 
We cry in darkness, creep to whence we came. 
Our little sorrows and our fleeting show, 
With all that crumbles whereunto men go ; 
But hers a splendor will endure when time 
And age have wrinkled up to shriveled scroll, 
The fame of fames above all fame sublime. 
The fair white memory of a woman's soul. 

Great Caesars, Alexanders, spoil a world. 

Enslave whole coasts, crush mighty peoples down; 

But greater greatness where love's flags are furled. 

Than wreck of earth's renown : — 

Her woman's kindness lightened all earth's seas. 

And drew to her by silken cord of love. 

What tyrants dread, in grim old centuries, 

Could not compel by might of iron glove. 

Not Shakespeare's art such majesty might wear ; 
Not Cromwell's spirit linked to lofty cause; 
Not Bonaparte could with her might compare; 
Her greatness lay in being what she was. 
Higher than genius, might or kingly bays — 
The queenliest queen, the noblest woman-soul 

Of all earth's mighty days! 



VICTORIA 161 

Yea, she is gone who ruled but yesterday, 
Her pomp, her power, her glory, but a name ! 
Not for its greatest will this mad world stay. 
ISTew dreams arise, new gods for love's acclaim, 
New fames, new prophets. Kings, as lesser clay. 
Are but the dead, gone, faded dreams 

Of dead, gone yesterday. 
Life feeds on life, earth's glories wane and die, 
Her mighty Sidons and her vaunted Tyres ! 
Her far-flamed beacons and her baleful fires; 
Only her noble actions never die. 
These bide and stay when names of seers and kings 
Are but the ashes of forgotten things. 
Hid 'mid the moth and rust of earth's imaginings. 

But she will live when we and all our time 
Are gathered to the dread and blinding past, 
A mighty dream for mighty-builded rhyme, 
The golden age of Britain's splendid prime, 
Eemembered when old glories, long that last. 
Are blown as shriveled autumn wreck 

Upon the age's blast. 
Yea, she will live, and tales of her pure life. 
Her toil for others, her wise woman's love, 
Her heart of sorrow 'mid the jar and strife. 
Her noble wifehood, faith in heaven above. 
Her simple trust in love from day to day ; 
Yea, these will bide, while peoples pass away 
With all that puts its trust 

In pomp of human clay. 

Soon, with majestic rite, and earth's wide sorrow, 
(Great lady of the pure and lofty crown !) 
Will Britain, weeping, lay her sadly down. 
To wait a brighter dawn, a happier morrow. 



162 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

In that rare tomb with that rare soul to sleep. 
In God's glad rest for all who wait and weep. 

And days will pass, and men will come and go, 
And love and hate and sorrow dream, alas ! 
And all this world and its wild wraith of woe 
Unto the wrack of all the ages pass ; 
And greatness be forgot and dreams decay, 
And empires fade, and great souls pass away; 
But she will linger in her people's love, 
As autumn lingers gilding winter's snows, 
Or sunset, fading purpled peaks above. 
Leaves golden trails of glory as he goes. 

So will she fade not, nor her honor pass, 
But burgeon on and grow to one white fame. 
While lark in heaven lifts from England's grass, 
And heart of England leaps to nobler flame. 



The Dead Poet 

(Lowell) 

Dead he lies at Elmwood, 
Who sang of human fortitude; 
Who voiced the higher, clearer way 
By which all nobler spirits may 
Rise to the rims of God's pure light 
Over the edges of earth's night ; 
Who sang of manhood's highest best, 
Like some sweet Arnold of the West, 
With more of kinship in his blood 
With the great struggling human brood. 



THE DEAD POET 163 

With more of lyric in his note, 
More of the clarion in his throat. 
Tuned to the brawnier West, 
He sang the songs our men love best. 

He woke new longings in the heart 
For that love-hungered, better part; 
He stripped religion of her creeds, 
And showed beneath the withered reeds 
And dead old grass husks, bleached and sere. 
The streams of God's love running clear. 
In humor's ink he dipped his pen. 
And mirth stirred in his f ellowmen ; 
That larger, healthier, kindlier mirth. 
That kindles in great souls of earth. 
His was the mind of reverence, 
Too great to give the soul offence. 

This was the poet, simple, true. 
Who all things glad for brothers knew; 
With clear eyes knew the kings of earth 
Beneath the husks of common worth; 
Who never grew too learned to loiow 
The hope of earth in heaven's bow; 
Who never grew too old to feel 
The sap of springtime upward steal ; 
Who never grew too worldly wise 
To see with purer, childward eyes ; 
Too human to be merely good. 
This great soul dead at Elmwood. 
The song of life was on his lips. 
True hmtian to the finger tips. 
With heart that pulsed and pulsed again, 
A man, he loved his fellowmen, 

11 



164 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

This singer of all singers, who 
To the young, strong republic true. 
Voicing earth's people in the van, 
Most manly, strong, American! • 

Yes, he is dead, as men know death. 
Who count our living by the breath 
That ebbs or flows. Yes, he is fload. 
With morning's blush, or evening's red, 
No more upon this earth will walk ; 
No more in human page, or talk, 
Will he delight, or teach his kind, 
Who love the glad lore of the mind. 
But till the last despair is fled, 
The last weird cell untenanted. 
The last sweet hope athwart the dark 
Vanishes in meteor spark ; 
While love of earth and man lives on. 
And God and hope ahead are gone 
To lead the way to loftier truth, 
And earth rejuvenates her youth ; 
Till earth her latest blossom gives, 
The heart of Lowell breathes and lives ; 
His Launfal learns the godlier way. 
His dandelion casts its dusty ray. 
His " Zekle " knows eternal youth ; 
As long as love, and hope, and truth, 
As long as bloom, and pulse of blood, 
He lives in earth's eternal good 
Who now lies dead at Elmwood. 

Ottawa, August, 1S91. 



SUMMER DEATH 165 

Summer Death 

(A Nature Monody — in Memory of the Hon. Arthur Rupert Dickey) 

I. 

Splendoe on splendor moves the summer world, 

Its daj's of beauty and its hours of thought 

And lofty vision. Over fields unfurled 

And these hushed woods with sunlit dreams inwrought 

Comes life's far promise. He alone is not. 

No more he comes, the grave, the wise, the kind, 

To share as once of 3'Ore love's treasures of the mind. 

How fills the silence with the year's great love. 

This golden precinct of her liberties; 

There is no breath in earth or heaven above. 

Save stir of winds or whispering lisp of trees. 

Or chirp of bird or murmurous drone of bees : — 

In spirit might he stands alone with us. 

To hark her under-song, so hushed, so tremulous ! 

This is the world he loved, this home of tree 
And grass and flower and far unsounded sky : 
His joy and quiet passion alone to be 
Abroad with nature in her tranquillity. 
When she nor all her train gave care a sigh : — 
Far, far from life's loud thunder or its grief. 
To stray in thought, alone, with flower and bud and 
leaf. 

This was his world, his leafy summer home, 
The woods he prized with quiet student CA^e. 
But where is he who gazed upon the dome 



166 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Of unflecked heaven and let man's world go by ; 
Its strident note tumultuous, shrill and high, 
And left the dreams of ermined Senate hall, 
To note her sunbeams dance, her silvern waters fall ? 

Where hath he soared, to what far heights of dream ? 

Grave Summer sobs his name among her boughs; 

And grieves him far by ocean loud, or stream. 

Quiet of woodlands; where the shimmering brows 

Of aspens fleck the waters with their snows, 

Happy and laughing; or the vagrant wind 

Haunts the high darkling wood like some unquiet mind. 

So grieves or laughs the Summer; me alone. 

Sadness unending and misty grief attends, 

By sunny field and where his pine-trees moan. 

Or soft conferring of his woodland friends :— 

For me alone grey Sorrow her brow unbends. 

And shows her eyes, those orbs whose haunted glooms 

Hold ever in their depths the year's eternal dooms. 

II. 

day of thought ! day of splendid dreams ! 

Where through these sunny glades the ghost winds walk, 

Making a melody of the leafy gleams : 

And overhead the ravens call and flock 

To incantations, where the pine-trees rock; — 

While far above from golden moorings high. 

The sun's white ancient barges drift down the azure sky. 

But he is gone. No more, no more, alas! 

Will he revisit these familiar scenes 

By peaceful haunts of waters or of grass; 



SUMMER DEATH 167 

No more amid the summer's gold and greens, 
A shadow with the silent shadows pass, 
devolving inward thoughts of days to lae. 
As one who reads life's book of God's futurity. 

III. 

Wide walls of elm trees, etched against the skies ! 

Far lofty aisles of summer majesty ! 

Where cool at morn the wandering winds arise; — 

Lean low your sighings to moan his death with me, 

Whose life, high-reaching like a slcyward tree. 

Cut in the forenoon of its splendid prime. 

Pell thundering on the slopes of shuddering time; — 

Lean low and teach me of your summer peace, 
A peace of heart that nature alone receives 
From out the treasures of her love's increase : 
Give me your balm of dreams and whispering leaves; 
And all that magic mighty summer weaves 
From out her shimmer and shade and inward dreams 
Of deep embosomed woods and sunward glinting 
streams ! 

In thunders of trade the loud world moves along. 

By granite avenues of its iron roar : — 

And men, unmoved b}^ melody of song, 

Toil like poor ants to pile the world's great store 

Of largesse rich by wave and sounding shore; — 

Beauty and thought, unheeded, 'reft, alone. 

Dream here unmindful of the world's far moan. 

But he hath vanished, only yesterday, 

'Mid rude alarm of earth's loud battle-drum. 

And all the century's latest hours astray, 



168 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

In doubt and mutterings of dread wars to come; 
Now he, the strong, the wise, is stricken dumb. 
At time's iron gates, while friend or foeman weeps. 
Unmindful of our woe and strife of life, he sleeps. 

IV. 

Grey gates of memory and the mournful mind ! 
Dim aisles of sadness and of pensive thought! 
Like touch of winter in the summer wind. 
Your dream of life with dreams of death is fraught! 
I feel your sadness though you murmur not, 
Where flute your reveries in love's woodland tune, 
Down hollow, golden slopes of haunted afternoon. 

Here in your glades where sunbeams interlace. 
My dreams are all for him who dreameth not. 
Whose sleep is hidden in some sacred place. 
Some solemn, lonely, love-devoted spot. 
Dedicate to tears and saddened thought, 
"Where sleep the dead who rest remote alone, 
Wliere Fundus thundering surges beat their mighty 
monotone. 

Here bide no sorrows, those grim shadowed glooms. 
Those sleepless torturers of the human mind, 
Alien to these luminous leafy rooms. 
Whose only tenant is the laughing wind 
]\Iindless of the days and hours behind. 
Wandering 'mid boughs and blossoms tremulous, 
Dead to all earth's ills and griefs that torture us. 

V. 

This cool, sweet, summer-breathing Sabbath morn, 
The very winds of heaven are filled with peace; 
Such restfulness upon their wings is borne 



SUMMER DEATH 169. 

Of motion wherein action seems to cease; — 

And life breathes on its slow-drawn measured lease; — ■ 

Low sighing airs, cool skies, and lisping leaves, 

A summer lute whereon the stately season grieves. 

On such a morn, enisled in summer dreams, 
All sadness sinks to peace ; a peace that holds 
The spirit in a trance as fields and streams 
Are held within the day's dim shining folds ; 
And a§ these woodlands in their greens and golds 
Stand hushed in trance of wind and leaf and bird : 
So we, too, stand and hark for nature's larger word. 

And it is meet that here in such an hour, 

AVhen all the world is tuned to love's low psalm, 

The heart should dream of him whose spirit's power, 

Whose whole true strength was islanded in calm, 

Like some reef-island of far summered palm. 

Hidden in peace from out those ruder seas 

Where rage the baser hates of life's mad destinies. 



'&^ 



So wrapt in strength he garnered from within. 

So isolate in peace he stood apart, 

A solitary headland in the din 

And maddened roar of all our angered mart. 

Alien from the mob and mad upstart, 

Serene and reticent, from all the world 

Of party-strife and its loud passions hurled : — - 

A hater of that sordid horde who sneak 
And cringe and crawl to favor's lap unclean ; 
A silent patriot not afraid to speak 
The saner word amid the mobs of spleen. 
He stood alone, and chose that golden mean 
Of wisdom's place 'twixt each extremity 
Of brutal bigot spite and blind antipathy. 



170 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

So like this limpid morning grew his life, 
So calm and temperate, kindly, grave, contained. 
It cannot be that all this peace is rife, 
And he alone in wintry silence chained ; 
Who ne'er perforce a single spirit pained. 
Whose quaint grave wisdom gladdened in his look. 
Should now be blind and dumb like wintry, prisoned 
brook ! 

Peace ! peace ! my spirit ! let not misery rave, 

That he who left us holds untimely tryst 

With shrouded death in June's untimely grave; 

Though Love her bright wings darkens info mist, 

With hope's eternal radiance death is kissed : — 

Peace ! peace ! he lives yet in our highest dreams, 

In every leafy, upward life, in every bud that gleams ! 



VI. 

He sleeps alone by Fundy's thundering shore. 
He sleeps, though heedless, unforgotten he, 
Who loved earth's mystery ever more and more. 
And yearned to pierce her veiled infinity ; 
He sleeps to-day unshackled, franchised, free, 
To wander where she wills him, she who gave 
And took to her again by sedge and sounding wave. 

He sleeps, and dreaming, chance in dreams he may; — 

If nature builds anew or holds unchanged 

That fragile mystery clothed erstwhile in clay, 

The human mind; whose wondrous vision ranged 

The universe of life and thought unchanged ; — ■ 

Soar to some morn, beyond these veiled skies, 

And dusks of our poor night, and all its vague surmise, 



SUMMER DEATH 171 

I grieve, but not alone, the whole earth grieves 
For him and all hushed souls who fare alone, 
Eeaped and bound as autumn-garnered sheaves. 
Unto that harvest of the dim unknown : — 
I grieve, but not in vain, as clouds are blown. 
By sun and wind aside till heaven looks through; — 
So some far shining hope illumines grief's dim dew. 

From here by lone Ottawa's* dreaming bank, 

To where he sleeps by his loved Fundy's tide. 

Unheeding, where the seabirds, rank on rank, 

Circle forever where the sea-winds ride : — 

A thread of memory doth forever bide 

Of those who knew and loved him in his prime, 

Till memory fades and fails in some dim after-time; — • 

Then men may question, gazing on his tomb. 

Who was this spirit of an earlier day? 

And chance, still lingering in the aftergloom. 

This sombre verse revivify his clay : 

And teach men of his worthiness to stay 

In memory and honor as of one 

Who passed, untimely, ere his weird was spun. 

This lover of earth's grave wisdom; in the man 

He prized it dearer than in lore of page ; 

And dwelt in spirit with that rarer clan. 

The seer, the bard, the prophet and the sage. 

Who dream the purer dreams of each new age. 

And build anew hope's citadels of time, 

In granite of grim thought, or mists of airy rhyme. 

Still dreams Ottawa,* 'twixt his country ways, 
The roar of cities and the haste of men ; — 
And far-off Fundy thimders through his haze 

' Pronounced Ot-taw-wa — with accent on second syllable. 



172 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

A grief more sad than woe of poet's pen, 

And wakes the sea-wolf in his craggy den, 

And lifts his mists and brims his tides afar, 

To lave the shining wastes of haunted Tantramar! 

I grieve, but sorrow lightens ; Love, all-wise. 

Hath ne'er made earth a charnel-house for tears: — 

Even as I dream, the morning drapes his skies 

In glories far by golden woods and meres, 

And builds a wondrous bastion round my fears; 

While loosen the winds, their shining wings unfurled, 

And God's great purpose compasses the world. 



Sebastian Cabot 
I. 

I DREAM his name, and there doth come to iiie 

A vision of league-long breakers landward hurled ; 

Of olden ships far-beating out to sea; 

Of splendid shining wastes of heaving green 

Far-stretching round the world; 

Of many voices heard from many lands, 

Torrid and arctic, orient and the Line; 

Of heaving of vast anchors, vanishing strands. 

And over all the wonder and thunder and wash 

Of the loud, world-conquering brine. 

Of sky-rimmed waste, or fog-enshrouded reef, 

Where some mad siren ever sings the grief 

Of all the mighty wrecks in that weird span 

Since ocean and time began. 



SEBASTIAN CABOT 173 

II. 

Venice and England cradled, 

Could this seaman be 

Other than ocean's child. 

With heart less restless than that vast and wild 

Great heart of the thrilling sea? 

Wakened to her long thunders, 

Cradled in her soft voice. 

Could other voice of all earth's voices sweet 

Make his stern heart rejoice? 

Yea, this was better than all, greater than all 

to him. 
Truer than youth's mad whim, 
The only love of his youth, the only lore of his 

age. 
To gaze on her vast tumultuous scroll. 
To pore on her wrinkled page : — 
For he was very soul of her soul, 
And she meet mother for him. 

III. 

Over the hazy distance. 
Beyond the sunset's rim. 
Forever and forever 
Those voices called to him, 
Westward ! westward ! westward ! 
The sea sang in his head, 
At morn in the busy harbor, 
At nightfall on his bed — 
Westward! westward! westward! 
Over the line of breakers, 
Out of the distance dim. 
Forever the foam-white fingera 
Beckoning, beckoning him. 



174 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

IV. 

This was no common spirit. 
This sailor of old Bristowe; 
Not one of the mart-made helots 
Such as the world doth know; 
But a bronzed and rugged veteran. 
Adrift in the vanguard's flow; 
A son of the world's great highway 
Where the mighty storm-winds blow. 

V. 

All honor to this grand old Pilot, 

Whose flag is struck, whose sails are furled, 

Whose ship is beached, whose voyage ended; 

Who sleeps somewhere in sod unknown, 

Without a slab, without a stone. 

In that great Island, sea-impearled. 

Yea, reverence with honor blended, 

For this old seaman of the past. 

Who braved the leagues of ocean hurled. 

Who out of danger knowledge rended. 

And built the bastions, sure and fast. 

Of that great bridgeway grand and vast 

Of golden commerce round the world. 

All honor ! yea, a day shall come. 

If glory lives in human rhyme. 

When our poor faltering lips are dumb ; 

A greater and more splendid time. 

When larger men of mightier aim 

Shall do meet honor to his name. 

Yea, honor! only greatness keeps 

Its sanctuary where this seaman sleeps; 

This old Venetian, Briton-born, 

Who held of fear a hero's scorn. 



SEBASTIAN CABOT 175 

Who nailed his colors to the mast, 
Who sought in reverence for the true, 
And found it in the rifting blue 
Of those broad furrows of the vast. 
Who knew no honors, held no state. 
But in his ruggedness was great. 
Who, like some sea-shell, in him felt 
The universe of ocean dwelt, 
"Whose whole true being nature cast 
Lifte his own ocean-spaces, vast ! 

VI. 

Yea, he is dead, this mighty seaman I 
Four long centuries ago. 
Beating westward, ever westward. 
Beating out from old Bristowe, 
Saw he far in visions lifted, 
Down the golden sunset's glow. 
Through the bars of twilight rifted, 
All the glories that we know. 
Beating westward, ever westward. 
Over heaving leagues of brine. 
Buffeted by arctic scurries. 
Languid trade-winds from the Line; 
With a courage heaven-gifted. 
And a fortitude divine. 
Yea, he is dead ; but who shall say 
That all the splendid deeds he wrought. 
That all the lofty truths he taught 
(If truth be knowledge nobly sought), 
Are dead and vanished quite away. 
Nay, nay, he lives ; and such as he. 
In every lofty human dream. 
In every true sublimity 



176 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

That splendors earth and makes it teem 
With inward miglit and majesty; 
This grand okl Pilot of Bristowe, 
Incarnate, comes to earth again, 
As when, four hundred years ago, 
He swept in storm and shine and snow, 
Athwart the thunders of the main. 

VII. 

Greater far than shaft or storied fane, 

Than bronze and marble blent, 

Greater than all the honors he could gain 

From a nation's high intent. 

He sleeps alone, in his great isle, unknown, 

With the chalk-cliffs all around him for his 

mighty graveyard stone. 
And the league-long, sounding roar 
Of old ocean, for evermore 
Beating, beating, about his rest. 
For fane and monument. 



Bereavement of the Fields 

(In Memory of Archibald Lampman, who died February 10th, 1899) 

Soft fall the February snows, and soft 

Falls on my heart the snow of wintry pain ; 

For never more, by wood or field or croft. 

Will he we knew walk with his loved again; 

No more, with eyes adream and soul aloft, 

In those high moods where love and beauty reign, 

Greet his familiar fields, his skies Avithout a staiu. 



BEREAVEMENT OF THE FIELDS 177 

Soft fall the February snows, and deep, 

Jjike downy pinions from the moulting breast 

Of all tbe mothering slcy, round his hushed sleep, 

Fhitter a million loves upon his rest, 

Where once his well-loved flowers were fain to peep, 

With adder-tongue and waxen petals prest. 

In young spring evenings reddening down the west. 

Soft fall the February snows, and hushed 

Seems life's loud action, all its strife removed. 

Afar, remote, where grief itself seems crushed. 

And even hope and sorrow are reproved; 

For he whose cheek erstwhile with hope was flushed. 

And by the gentle haunts of being moved. 

Hath gone the way of all he dreamed and loved. 

Soft fall the February snows, and lost. 
This tender spirit gone with scarce a tear. 
Ere, loosened from the dungeons of the frost. 
Wakens with yearnings new the enfranchised year. 
Late winter-wizened, gloomed, and tempest-tost; 
And Hesper's gentle, delicate veils appear. 
When dream anew the days of hope and fear. 

And Mother Nature, she whose heart is fain. 
Yea, she who grieves not, neither faints nor fails. 
Building the seasons, she will bring again 
March with rudening madness of wild gales, 
April and her wraiths of tender rain, 
And all he loved, — this soul whom memory veils. 
Beyond the burden of our strife and pain. 

Not his to wake the strident note of song, 

Xor pierce the deep recesses of the heart. 

Those tragic wells, remote, of might and wrong; 



178 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

But rather, with those gentler souls apart, 
He dreamed like his own summer days along. 
Filled with the heauty born of his own heart. 
Sufficient in the sweetness of his song. 

Outside this prison-house of all our tears. 

Enfranchised from our sorrow and our wrong, 

Beyond the failure of our days and years. 

Beyond the burden of our saddest song, 

He moves with those whose music filled his ears, 

And claimed his gentle spirit from the throng, — 

Wordsworth, Arnold, Keats, high masters of his song. 

Like some rare Pan of those old Grecian days, 
Here in our hours of deeper stress reborn, 
Unfortunate thrown upon life's evil ways, 
His inward ear heard ever that satyr horn 
From Nature's lips reverberate night and morn. 
And fled from men and all their troubled maze. 
Standing apart, with sad, incurious gaze. 

And now, untimely cut, like some sweet flower 
Plucked in the early summer of its prime, 
Before it reached the fullness of its dower. 
He withers in the morning of our time; 
Leaving behind him, like a summer shower, 
A fragrance of earth's beauty, and the chime 
Of gentle and imperishable rh3ane. 

Songs in our ears of winds and flowers and buds 
And gentle loves and tender memories 
Of Nature's sweetest aspects, her pure moods, 
Wrought from the inward truth of intimate eyes 
And delicate ears of him who harks and broods, 
And, nightly pondering, daily grows more wise. 
And dreams and sees in mighty solitudes. 



NICHOLAS FLOOD DAVIN 179 

Soft fall the February snows^ and soft 
He sleeps in peace upon the breast of her 
He loved the truest; where, by wood and croft, 
The wintry silence folds in fleecy blur 
About his silence, while in glooms aloft 
The mighty forest fathers, without stir, 
Guard well the rest of him, their rare sweet 
worshipper. 



Nicholas Flood Davin 

Nattjee the mother hath her seas, 
Her lakes, her vales, her mountain 
rifts, 

And to her various sons she gives 
Her various gifts. 

To one the power of mighty mind, 
To sway, to forge a people's chain. 

And to another but to bear 
A life-long pain. 

To one rare soul her magic lore 
Of will, keen insight, prophecy; 

To do, to dare, and change all things 
Beneath the sky. 

Unto another to console, 

To raise and succor, aid and heal 
Those wounded ones who blindly drive 

Fate's grinding wheel. 
12 



180 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Not singly gifted was this man, 
Jfo simple furrow his to plow ; 

But with a burden of gifts the Mother 
kind 
Did him endow. 

The piercing wit, the splendid form, 
The poet lip, the flashing eye, 

And all that magic power of soul 
That will not die, 

Not his to rule with subtle skill, 
To plot, to plan with fertile brain ; 

But with rare charm of mind and voice 
To hold and chain. 

Here where he sleeps we rear this stone. 
Memorial of his spirit's force ; 

This valiant knight whom death alone 
Could dare unhorse. 

Alone he moved amid our clan, 
A genial alien in our waste, 

The courtly relic of an age 
Of finer taste; 

When kindly satire forged her darts. 
And wit and learning leaned to rhyme ; 

And polished sentences were more in 
vogue. 
And less a crime. 

Courteous and manly, child of that 
Eare charm old Erin grants her sons; 

With all that humorous touch with 
which she dowers 
Her rarer ones. 



HENRY A. HARPER 181 

Not his to raise prophetic voice, 

To sear the soul with flaming brand : 

He stood for culture, genial, kind, 
In our new land : 

Where Force, oft naked, often clothed 

In ruder garments than is meet, 
Doth in grave senate halls parade, 

As in the street. 

Yea, he is gone, departed hence, 
When shall our halls another find : 

His kindly satire, scintillating wit, 
His classic mind. 

And o'er his grave Canadian love 
Canadian grief a garland throws: 

And our young muse a chaplet binds 
About his brows. 

Leaving his faults, his virtues rare. 
His failure, hopes, to gentle heaven; 

Forgiving his weakness, as we do also 
pray 
To be forgiven. 



Henry A. Harper 

(Drowned in the Ottawa River while trying to save Miss Blair) 

We crown the splendors of immortal peace. 
And laud the heroes of ensanguined war, 
Eearing in granite memory of men 
Who build the future, recreate the past. 
Or animate the present dull world's pulse 
With loftier riches of the human mind. 



182 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

But his was greatness not of common mould, 
And yet so human in its simple worth, 
That any spirit plodding its slow round 
Of social commonplace and daily moil, 
]\Iight blunder on such greatness, did he hold 
In him the kernel sap from which it sprung. 

Men in rare hours great actions may perform. 

Heroic, lofty, whereof earth will ring, 

A world onlooking, and the spirit strung 

To high achievement, at the cannon's mouth. 

Or where fierce ranks of maddened men go down. 

But this was godlier. In the common round 

Of life's slow action, stumbling on the brink 

Of sudden opportunity, he chose 

The only noMe, godlike, splendid way. 

And made his exit, as earth's great have gone. 

By that vast doorway looking out on death. 

No poet this of winged, immortal pen ; 

No hero of an hundred victories; 

Nor iron moulder of unwieldy states, 

Grave counsellor of parliaments, gold-tongued. 

Standing in shadow of a centuried fame, 

Drinking the splendid plaudits of a world. 

But simple, unrecorded in his days. 

Unostentatious, like the average man 

Of average duty, walked the common earth. 

And when fate flung her challenge in his face. 

Took all his spirit in his blinded eyes. 

And showed in action why God made the world. 

He passes as all pass, both small and great. 

Oblivion-clouded, to the common goal; — 

And all unmindful moves the dull world round, 



THE DEAD LEADER 183 

With baser dreams of this material day, 
And all that makes man petty, the slow pace 
Of small accomplishment that mocks the sonl. 

But he hath taught us by this splendid deed. 
That under all the brutish mask of life 
And dulled intention of ignoble ends, 
Man's soul is not all sordid ; that behind 
.This tragedy of ills and hates that seem. 
There lurks a godlike impulse in the world. 
And men are greater than they idly dream. 



The Dead Leader 

(Written on the day of Sir John A. Macdonald's Funeral, 
June 10th, 1891) 

Let the sad drums mutter low. 

And the serried ranks move slow. 
And the thousand hearts beat hushed along the street ; 

For a mighty heart is still, 

And a great, unconquered will 
Hath passed to meet the conqueror all must meet. 

Outworn without assoil 

From a great life's lengthened toil. 
Laurelled with a half a century's fame ; 

From the care and adulation 

To the heart-throb of the nation 
He hath passed to be a memory and a name. 

With banners draped and furled, 

'Mid the sorrow of a world. 
We lay him down with fitting pomp and state; 

With slumber in his breast. 

To his long, eternal rest 
We lay him down, this man who made us great. 



184 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Him of the wider vision, 

Who had one hope, elysian. 
To mould a mighty empire toward the west: 

Who through the hostile years, 

'Mid the wrangling words, like spears. 
Still bore this titan vision in his breast. 

God gave this highest honor 

To the nation, that upon her 
He was spared to lay the magic of his hand; 

Then to live to see the greatness 

Of his noble work's completeness, 
Then to pass to rest beloved by his land. 

We stand at death's dim gates 

Where his mighty soul awaits 
Somewhere the long, long silence of the years. 

And the marble of his lips 

Doth all our woe eclipse, 
Death's awful peace rolls back upon our tears. 

Greater than all sorrow 

That our hearts can borrow. 
Loftier than our fleeting, human praise ; 

He hath calmness, great and grim. 

That death hath granted him. 
The wisest and the mightiest of our days. 

Let the sad drums mutter low. 

And the serried ranks move slow, 
And the thousand hearts beat hushed along the street 

For a mighty heart is still, 

And a great, unconquered will 
Hath passed to meet the conqueror all must meet. 



ALEXANDER LUMSDEN 185 

Alexander Lumsden 

A Scottish-Canadian 

Beside the Eideau, 'neath its elms. 
Still stands the home he loved so well ; 

But silence eternal overwhelms 
The kindly master 'neath its spell. 

Beneath its rooftree hushed he lies 
In death's cold truce of mortal pain, 

"While outside under August skies 
His loved flowers glisten in the rain. 

Unconscious in their lack of grief 
Of those who come or those who go. 

Innocent in their beauty brief, 

Of human heart-break, human woe. 

A man he was of simple moods, 

Of strong keen action, kindly thought, 

A friend of life's beatitudes, 

Beneath the rough mail grimly wrought. 

Time's busy battlers of the street. 
In strife for earth's material things, 

Know not the souls they daily meet, 

Disguised in trade's grim armored rings. 

'Tis not the outward presence, bland. 
Whose honied accents plaudits win. 

The favored idol of a land, 

That holds the noblest heart within. 



186 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

'Twas not the high or lowly birth, 
The worldly culture, made this man,- 

But somewhat in him, more than earth. 
That blessed him ere his life began. 

Some kind, intuitive knowledge sent, 
Some wisdom of the heart and brain ; 

Some essence in his nature blent, 

As throughout heaven dissolves the rain ; 

That 'mid the grime of worldly strife, 
Of toil's rude struggle, hard and grim, 

Still near to nature all his life 

There walked the unsullied heart of him. 

A spirit joying in tender moods 
Of bud and blossom, sun and rain ; 

Who read the wisdom of wide woods, 
A poet with all the poet's pain. 

The bough into the blast is bent. 
The shaft from out the bow is sped ; 

The fire that flamed the wick is spent. 
The wind that whirled the dust is dead. 

Fair Stanley Avenue, once so full 
Of life's achievement, power and will ! 

fRow only silence beautiful ! 

The very vagrant hours are still. 

New Edinbttegh, August 6, 1904. 



Ipoems of tbe Uttcctions 



BEYOND THE HILLS OF DREAM 189 



Beyond the Hills of Dream 

Over the mountains of sleep, my Love, 

Over the hills of dream, 
Beyond the walls of care and fate, 

Where the loves and memories teem ; 
Wej2ome to a world of fancy free. 

Where hearts forget to weep; — 
Over the mountains of dream, my Love, 

Over the hills of sleep. 

Over the hills of care, my Love, 

Over the mountains of dread. 
We come to a valley, glad and vast, 

Where we meet the long-lost dead: 
And there the gods in splendor dwell. 

In a land where all is fair. 
Over the mountains of dread, my Love, 

Over the hills of care. 

Over the mountains of dream, my Love, 

Over the hills of sleep ; — 
Could we but come to that heart's desire. 

Where the harvests of fancy reap, 
Then we would know the old joys and hopes, 

The longings of youth's bright gleam. 
Over the mountains of sleep, my Love, 

Over the hills of dream. 

Yea, there the sweet old years have rest. 

And there my heart would be, 
Amid the glad ones loved of yore. 

At the sign of the Fancy Free; 



190 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

And there the okl lips would repeat 

Earth's memories o'er and o'er, 
Over the mountains of might-have-been. 

Over the hills of yore. 

Unto that valley of dreams, my Love, 

If we could only go. 
Beyond the mountains of heart's despair, 

The hills of winter and snow, 
Then we would come to those happy isles, 

Those shores of blossom and wing, 
Over the mountains of waiting, my Love, 

Over the hills of spring. 

And there where the woods are scarlet and gold, 

And the apples are red on the tree. 
The heart of autumn is never old 

In that country where we would be. 
And how would we come to that land, my Love? 

Follow the midnight stars, 
That swim and gleam in a milk-white stream. 

Over the night's white bars. 



"to' 



Or follow the trail of the sunset red 

That beacons the dying deeps 
Of day's wild borders down the edge 

Of silence, where evening sleeps; 
Or take the road that the morning wakes. 

When he whitens his first rosebeam, 
Over the mountains of glory, my Love, 

Over the hills of dream. 

Sometime, sometime, we will go, my Love, 
When winter loosens to spring, 

And all the spirits of Joy are a jog. 
After the wild-bird's wing, — 



BEYOND THE HILLS OF DREAM 191 

Wlien winter and sorrow have opened their doors 

To set love's prisoners free, 
Over the mountains of woe, my Love, 

Over the hills of dree. 

And when we reach there we will know 

The faces we knew of yore. 
The lips that kissed, the hands that clasped, 

When memory loosens her store; 
And we will drink to the long dead years, 

In that inn of the golden gleam. 
Over the mountains of sleep, my Love, 

Over the hills of dream. 

And all the joys we missed, my Love, 

And all the hopes we knew. 
The dreams of life we dreamed in vain, 

When youth's red blossoms blew; 
And all the hearts that throbbed for us, 

In the past so sunny and fair, 
We will meet and greet in that golden land, 

Over the hills of care. 

Over the mountains of sleep, my Love, 

Over the hills of dream, 
Beyond the walls of care and fate. 

Where the loves and memories teem. 
We come to a land of fancy free, 

Where hearts forget to weep. 
Over the mountains of dream, my Love, 

Over the hills of sleep. 



192 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



Love 

Love came at dawn when all the world was fair, 
When crimson glories, bloom, and sung were rife; 

Love came at dawn when hope's wings fanned the air. 
And murmured, " I am life." 

Love came at even when the day was done, 

When heart and brain were tired, and slumber 
pressed ; 

Love came at eve, shut out the sinking sun. 
And whispered, " I am rest." 



Afterglow 

After the clangor of battle 

There comes a moment of rest, 

And the simple hopes and the simple joys 

And the simple thoughts are best. 

After the victor's paean, 

After the thunder of gun, 

There comes a lull that must come to all 

Before the set of the sun. 

Then "wdiat is the happiest memory? 
Is it the foe's defeat? 
Is it the splendid praise of a world 
That thunders by at your feet ? 



OUT OF POMPEII 193 

Nay, nay, to the life-worn spirit 
The happiest thoughts are those 
That carry us back to the simple joys 
And the sweetness of life's repose. 

A simple love and a simple trust 
And a simple duty done, 
Are truer torches to light to death 
Than a whole world's victories won. 



Out of Pompeii 

She lay, face downward, on her bended arm, 

In this her new, sweet dream of human bliss, 
Her heart within her fearful, fluttering, warm, 

Her lips yet pained with love's first timorous kiss. 
She did not note the darkening afternoon, 

She did not mark the lowering of the sky 
O'er that great city. Earth had given its boon 

Unto her lips, love touched her and passed by. 

In one dread moment all the sky grew dark. 

The hideous rain, the panic, the red rout, 
Where love lost love, and all the world might mark 

The city overwhelmed, blotted out 
Without one cry, so quick oblivion came. 

And life passed to the black where all forget; 
But she — we know not of her house or name — - 

In love's sweet musings doth lie dreaming yet. 

The dread hell passed, the ruined world grew still, 
And the great city passed to nothingness: 

The ages went and mankind worked its will. 

Then men stood still amid the centuries' press. 



194 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

And in the ash-hid ruins opened bare. 

As she lay down in her shamed loveliness, 

Sculptured and frozen, late they found her there. 
Image of love 'mid all that hideousness. 

Her head, face downward, on her bended arm, 

Her single robe that showed her shapely form, 
Her wondrous fate love keeps divinely warm 

Over the centuries, past the slaying storm ; 
The heart can read in writings time hath left. 

That linger still through death's oblivion ; 
And in this waste of life and light bereft. 

She brings again a beauty that had gone. 

And if there be a day when all shall wake. 

As dreams the hoping, doubting hiiman heart, 
The dim forgetfulness of death will break 

For her as one who sleeps with lips apart; 
And did God call her suddenly, I know 

She'd wake as morning wakened by the thrush, 
Feel that red kiss across the centuries glow. 

And make all heaven rosier by her blush. 



Harvest Slumber Song 

Sleep, little baby, sleep, sleep, sleep, 
Eed is the moon in the night's still deep, 
White are the stars with their silver wings 
Folded in dreamings of beautiful things, 
And over their cradle the night wind sings, 
Sleep, little baby, sleep, sleep, sleep. 

Soft in the lap of the mother night 

The wee baby stars, all glowing and bright. 



THE MOTHER 195 

Flutter their silver wings and crow 
To the watchful winds that kiss as they blow 
Eound the air-cradle that swings so low 
Down in the lap of the mother night. 

Sleep, little baby, sleep, sleep, sleep, 

Red is the moon in the night's still deep, 

And the wee baby stars are all folded and kissed 

Ih a luminous cradle of silver mist; 

And if ever they waken the winds cry. Whist, 

Sleep, little baby, sleep, sleep, sleep. 



The Mother 

This poem was suggested by the following passage in Tyler's 
Animism: " The pathetic German superstition that the dead mother's 
coming back in the night to suckle the baby she has left on earth 
may be known by the hollow pressed down in the bed wliere she 
lay." 



It was April, blossoming spring, 

They buried me, when the birds did sing; 

Earth, in clammy wedging earth, 

They banked my bed with a black, damp girth. 

Under the damp and under the mould, 

I kenned my breasts were clammy and cold. 

Out from the red beams, slanting and bright, 
I kenned my cheeks were sunken and white. 

I was a dream, and the world was a dream, 
And yet I kenned all things that seem. 
13 



196 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

I was a dream, and the world was a dream, 
But you cannot bury a red sunbeam. 

For though in the under-grave's doom-night 
I lay all silent and stark and white, 

Yet over my head I seemed to know 

The murmurous moods of wind and snow, 

The snows that wasted, the winds that blew. 
The rays that slanted, the clouds that drew 

The water-ghosts up from lakes below, 

And the little flower-souls in earth that grow. 

Under earth, in the grave's stark night, 
I felt the stars and the moon's pale light. 

I felt the winds of ocean and land 

That whispered the blossoms soft and bland. 

Though they had buried me dark and low, 
My soul with the season's seemed to grow. 

II. 

From throes of pain they buried me low, 
For death had finished a mother's woe. 

But under the sod, in the grave's dread doom, 
I dreamed of my baby in glimmer and gloom. 

I dreamed of my babe, and I kenned that his rest 
Was broken in wailings on my dead breast. 

I dreamed that a rose-leaf hand did cling: 
Oh, you cannot bury a mother in spring! 



THE MOTHER 197 

"WTien the winds are soft and the blossoms are red 
She could not sleep in her cold earth-bed. 

I dreamed of my babe for a day and a night, 
And then I rose in my graveclothes white. 

I rose like a flower from my damp earth-bed 
To the world of sorrowing overhead. 

Men would have called me a thing of harm. 
But dreams of my babe made me rosy and warm. 

I felt my breasts swell under my shroud; 
No star shone white, no winds were loud; 

But I stole me past the graveyard wall, 
Tor the voice of my baby seemed to call; 

iVnd I kenned me a voice, though my lips were 

dumb: 
Hush, baby, hush ! for mother is come. 

I passed the streets to my husband's home; 
The chamber stairs in a dream I clornb; 

I heard the sound of each sleeper's breath. 
Light waves that break on the shores of death. 

I listened a space at my chamber door, 
Then stole like a moon-ray over its floor. 

My babe was asleep on a stranger arm, 
" baby, my baby, the grave is so warm, 

'■^ Though dark and sud deep, for mother is there ! 
come with me from the pain and care ! 



198 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

" come with me from the anguish of earth, 
Where the bed is banked with a blossoming girth, 



to' 



" Wliere the pillow is soft and the rest is long. 
And mother will croon you a slumber-song — 

" A slumber-song that will charm your eyes 
To a sleep that never in earth-song lies ! 

" The loves of earth your being can spare, 
But never the grave, for mother is there.'* 

I nestled him soft to my throbbing breast. 
And stole me back to my long, long rest. 

And here I lie with him under the stars. 
Dead to earth, its peace and its wars; 

Dead to its hates, its hopes, and its harms, 
So long as he cradles up soft in my arms. 

And heaven may open its shimmering doors. 
And saints make music on pearly floors, 

And hell may yawn to its infinite sea. 
But they never can take my baby from me. 

For so much a part of my soul he hath grown 
That God doth know of it high on His throne. 

And here I lie with him under the flowers 
That sun-winds rock through the billowy hours. 

With the night-airs that steal from the murmur- 
ing sea. 
Bringing sweet peace to my baby and me. 



ON A SUMMER SHORE 199 

On a Summer Shore 

Long years have gone, and yet it seems 

But scarce an hour ago, 
I lay upon a moss-grown rock, 

And watched the ebb and flow 
Of waters, where cool shades above 

Glassed in cool depths below. 

You stood beside me sweet and fair, 

A basket on your arm, 
Eed-heaped with luscious fruit we'd picked 

Down at the old shore-farm ; 
You stood and in the shore-wood made 

A picture glad and warm. 

Like heaving pearl the blue bay rocked 

Against its limestone wall. 
Far ofp in reeling dreams of blue 

The heavens seemed to fall 
About the world, and there you stood, 

Unconscious, queen of all. 

From far-off fields the low of kine. 

Soft bird-^'otes, airy streams. 
That stole in here, far, broken notes 

Of all the day's hushed dreams; 
And you, one slender shaft of light. 

In all the world's wide gleams. 

We spoke no love, for I was shy, 

And you were shyer then; 
Mine was a boy's faint heart, and yours 

Still outside of love's ken; 
But such sweet moments are full rare 

In barren years of men. 



200 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

And often when the heart is worn 
And life grows sorrow-wise, 

I dream again a blue, north bay, 
A gleam of summer skies; 

And by my side a young girl stands 
With heaven in her eyes. 

You are a dream, a face, a wraith. 
You drift across my pain, 

I lock you in my sacred past 
Where all love's ghosts remain; 

But life hath nought for me so sweet 
As you can bring again. 



Belated 

The year drifts sadly back this way. 
With autumn's grief and pain; 

But with the red leaf and the gold 
She ne'er will come again. 

This world hath its weird beauteousness. 

That youth in music stirs ; 
But time will ne'er bring back to earth 

The beauty that was hers. 

You could not call a red leaf God's 

If she were not God's too; 
A light fell on such eyes and lips 

Man never more will woo. 

When her smile went the day's went too. 
Night, when she closed her eyes, 



BELATED 

Lost half its glory. When she woke 
Earth changed to paradise. 

She looked so peaceful in her sleep 
When they laid her to her rest 

I could not help but think upon ' 
An infant at the breast. 

^ She looked so like to one who'd wake 
This side the break of dawn, 
I grudged the very earth they heaped 
Her snow-like breast upon. 

I hear her low voice calling soft. 

Her footstep at the doors ; 
I wake up in the dead of night. 

And walk the wintry floors. 

I see her croon her babe to sleep, 
Athwart the moonlight now, 

Her wealth of golden hair that fell 
Across her gentle brow. 

I often walk at death of day. 

Amid the sunset firs. 
And dream the world will no more know 

The beauty that was hers. 

I wonder in some far-off state. 

If love can conquer death, 
Will I know her and she know me. 

As when she drew life's breath? 

And will she stand at some flame-gate. 
And wait and watch for me. 



201 



202 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

And fall upon my breast and weep 
With joy my face to see ? 

And bring the little ones around 
To climb to father's arms; 

While her sweet face, the face of yore, 
To mother-beauty warms? 

And we go, laughing, weeping, through 
Some gate of crystal dome, 

While love grows godlike more and more, 
To greet the wanderer home. 



Departure 

Old house now ruined, wrecked and grey. 
Home once enshrined of love's delight 

And all glad promise of the May, 

Now hushed in shades of wintry night,— 

Once garment of a thousand loves, 

Now but a shroud of glooming stone, — 

While sad October moans and roves. 
Old house, old house, we are alone ! 

We are alone; yea, you and I, 

Who dreamed old summers in their prime; 
Now sad and late, to see them die 

Along this ruined verge of time. 

Old rooms now empty, once so bright, — 
Staircases climbed of gladdening feet. 

Dark windows erstwhile filled with light 
Where no\v but rains of autumn beat;— 



DEPARTURE 203 

Where now but lorn months call and call, 
And sea and gust and night complain, — 

With ghost-boughs shadowing on the wall, 
Or dead vines laiocking at the pane. 

Old place, whose ceilings, walls and floors 

Still redolent of love and May, 
Once more, once more I leave your doors. 

Into the night I take my way. 

Huge yawning hearths, once flaming bright 
On many a well-loved face and form 

Long gathered out unto the night 

To meet the vastness and the storm, — 

Into the night; where I, too, go. 

Beyond your sheltering walls and doors; 

Where death's October drives his woe 
Over a thousand midnight moors. 

Beyond your sheltering, where I beat 
To sleep with stars of dark o'ergleamed, 

Or breast the night of moan and sleet 

To meet that morn a world hath dreamed. 

Hath dreamed? Hope-hungering heart hath read, 

And caroled morning-lifted lark! 
Yea, back of all this muffled dread 

Perchance some splendor rifts the dark. 

Yea, though no magic reach its gleams, 
Nor heart of doubting prove it true, 

Old house, beloved, of my dead dreams. 
While I go forth from love and you. 



204 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



Her Look 

Time may set his fingers there. 

Fix the smiles that curve about 
Her winsome mouth, and touch her hair. 

Put the curves of youth to rout ; 
But the " something " God put there, 

That which drew me to her first, 
Not the imps of pain and care, 

Not all sorrow's fiends accurst, 
Can kill the look that God put there. 

Something beautiful and rare, 

Nothing common can destroy; 
Not all the leaden load of care. 

Not all the dross of earth's alloy ; 
Better than all fame or gold. 

True as only God's own truth 
It is something all hearts hold 

Who have loved once in their youth. 

That sweet look her face doth hold 

Thus will ever be to me; 
Joy may all her pinions fold, 

Care may come and misery ; 
Through the days of murk and shine, 

Though the roads be foul or fair, 
I will see through love's glad eyne 

That sweet look that God put there. 



dramatic, Classic anb Jmaainatlvc IDerse 



THE LAST SCENE FROM "MORDRED" 207 



The Last Scene from " Mordred " 

Another part of the field. Enter Arthur surrounded 

by knights. 

Arthur. ITow where is he, that monster, foul; 

deformed 
In sha^e and spirit, Nature calls my son? 

Enter Mordred. 
Mordred. Here ! 

Arthur. Ah, Blot on all this sunlight. Creature dire. 
Spawn of mine incest. There standest thou my sin, 
Incarnate now before me, mine old doom ; 
Thou that wast stronger in thine influences 
To work dread evil in this hideous world 
Than all the glory all my good might win. 
Mordred. Father ! 

Arthur. Yea, well say Father ! Parent I this ill 
That hath enrent my kingdom all in twain. 
In that dread night of my licentious youth. 
When I in darlmess thy foul shape begot, 
I worked a web of blackness round my fate 
And thine, distorted phantom of my sin, 
ISTot all the tolling of sweet abbey-bells. 
And murmur of masses sung these thousand years. 
Can sweep from this doomed kingdom. Father ! yea. 
There is no truce betwLxt us. Thou art Death 
To all that I hold dearest on this earth. 
Thou stood'st betwixt me and my gladder fate. 
The one black spot on all my glory's sun. 
In thee once more mine evil blackens in, 
Eeddens mine eyesight. Have at thee, foul Curse! 
Mordred. Father ! 



208 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Arthur. Have at you ! 

{They fight. Arthur wounds Mordred. He falls. 
A Knight stahs Arthur from behind.) 
Arthur. Ho ! all the sunlight blackens ! Mordred ! Oh ! 
My glory darkens! Curtain not yon sun! (Dies.) 
Mordred. Yea, this is all and I were made for this. 
To scatter death and desolation round 
On this fair kingdom, ruin this sweet land. 
And level all the pride of Arthur's glory. 
As men might level some great castle walls 
And sow with salt the fields of his desire. 
And make him mock before the eyes of men. 
Turn all his great joy into bitterness. 
Yea, I his blood, and I were made for this. 
Oh, ancient, cruel Laws of human life, 
Oh, deep, mysterious, unfathomable Source 
Of man's poor being, we are ringed about 
With such hard rinds of hellish circumstance. 
That we can never walk or breathe or hope. 
Or eye the sun, or ponder on the green 
Of tented plain, or glorious blue of heaven, 
Or know love's joy, or knotted thews of strength. 
But imps of evil thoughts creep in between. 
Like lizards in the chinks of some fair wall. 
And mar life's splendor and its fairness all. 
'Tis some damned birth-doom blended in the blood 
That prophesies our end in our poor acts. 
Oh 1 we are but blind children of the dark. 
Wending a way we neither make nor ken. 
Yea, Arthur, I had loved thee sweet and well. 
And made mine arm a bulwark to thy realm. 
Had I been but as fair as Lancelot. 
What evil germ, false quickening of the blood. 
Did breed me foul, distorted as I am, 
That I should mar this earth and thy great realm 
With my wry, knotted sorrows ? Lancelot's love 



THE LAST SCENE FROM '' AfORDRED" 209 

Was manly, kind, and generous as became 

A soul encased in such propitious frame. 

The kingly trees well turn them to the sun. 

And glory in their splendor with the morn. 

'Tis natural that noble souls should dwell 

'Twixt noble features, but the maimed soul 

Should ever be found in the distorted shape. 

But I had loved as never man hath loved 

Did nature only plant me sweet at first. 

{To his Knights.) And now I die, and blessed be my 

death. 
More blessed far that I had never breathed. 
]\[urder and Treason were my midwives dire, 
Eapine and Carnage, priests that shrive me now. 

Enter Vivien, disguised as a Squire. 
Vivien. Mordred ! thou diest ! 
Mordred. Who art thou ? 
Vivien. I am Vivien. 

Mordred. Hence, hence. Viper, incarnate Fiend! 
Not natural woman, but Ambition framed. 
And all lust's envy. Thou wert unto me 
A blacker blackness. Did an angel come. 
And whisper sweeter counsel in mine ears. 
And trumpet hopes that all were not in vain; 
And thou wouldst wool mine ears with malice dire, 
And play upon the black chords of my heart. 
Hence, i)evil ! Mar not these my closing hours. 
Vivien. 0, Woe! Woe! (Steals out.) 
Mordred. (To the Knights.) Now bear me slowly to 

great Arthur's side 
And let me place my hands upon his breast. 
For he was mine own father ! Alas 1 Alas ! 
So hideous is this nature we endure! 

(The Soldiers place him hy Arthur.) 
How calm he sleeps, Allencthon, as those should 
Who die in glorious battle. Dost thou know. 



210 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

mighty Father, that thine ill-got son, 
Ill-got of nature and mysterious night. 
To mar thy splendor and enwreck this world, 
Now crawls to thy dead body near his death, 
As would some wounded dog of faithful days, 
To lick his master's hand? Blame not, King, 
If thou somewhere may know what I here feel. 
Thy poor, misshapen Mordred. Blame him not 
The turbulent, treacherous currents of his blood 
Which were a part of thine, nor let one thought 
Of his past evil mar thy mighty rest; 
He would have loved thee ; but remember that. 
Now past is all this splendor, new worlds come; 
But nevermore will Britain know such grace. 
Such lofty glory and such splendid days. 
Back of the clang of battle, back of all 
The mists of life, the clamor and the fall 
Of ruined kingdoms built on human days; 
Arthur ! Merlin ! Mighty dead, I come ! 

{Sp7-ings to his feet.) 
Ho ! Horse ! To Horse ! My sword ! A trumpet 

calls ! 
A Mordred I (Dies.) 



Pan the Fallen 

He wandered into the market 

With pipes and goatish hoof; 
He wandered in a grotesque shape, 

And no one stood aloof. 
For the children crowded round him, 

The wives and greybeards, too. 
To crack their jokes and have their mirth. 

And see what Pan would do. 



PAN THE FALLEN 211 

The Pan he was they knew him. 

Part man, but mostly beast, 
Who drank, and lied, and snatched what bones 

Men threw him from their feast; 
Who seemed in sin so merry. 

So careless in his woe. 
That men despised, scarce pitied him, 

And still would have it so. 

He swelled his pipes and thrilled them. 

And drew the silent tear ; 
He made the gravest clack with mirth 

By his sardonic leer. 
He blew his pipes full sweetly 

At their amused demands. 
And caught the scornful, earth-flung pence 

That fell from careless hands. 

He saw the mob's derision, 

And took it kindly, too. 
And when an epithet was flung, 

A coarser back he threw; 
But under all the masking 

Of a brute, unseemly part, 
I looked, and saw a wounded soul. 

And a godlike, breaking heart. 

And back of the elfin music. 

The burlesque, clownish play, 
I knew a wail that the weird pipes made, 

A look that was far away, — 
A gaze into some far heaven 

Whence a soul had fallen down ; 
But the mob only saw the grotesque beast 

And the antics of the clown. 
14 



212 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

For scant-flung pence he paid them 

With mirth and elfin play, 
Till, tired for a time of his antics queer. 

They passed and went their way; 
Then there in the empty market 

He ate his scanty crust, 
And, tired face turned to heaven, down 

He laid him in the dust. 

And over his wild, strange features 

A softer light there fell, 
And on his worn, earth-driven heart 

A peace ineffable. 
And the moon rose over the market. 

But Pan the beast was dead; 
While Pan the god lay silent there. 

With his strange, distorted head. 

And the people, when they found him. 

Stood still with awesome fear. 
No more they saw the beast's rude hoof. 

The furtive, clownish leer; 
But the lightest spirit in that strong 

Went silent from the place, 
Por they knew the look of a god released 

That shone from his dead face. 



Phaethon 

I Phaethon : dwelling in that golden house, 
Which Hephaistos did build for my great sire. 
Old Helios, king of glowing heaven and day; 
Knowing this life but mortal in its span, 
Hedged in by puling youth and palsied age. 
Where poor men crawl like insects, knowing pain 



PHAETHON 213 

And mighty sorrow to the gates of death ; 

Besought the god my father by his love 

To grant me that which I did long for most 

Of all things great in earth and heaven and sea. 

The which he granting in his mighty love, — 

Of all things splendid under the splendid sky 

Built of old by toil of ancient gods, 

To me the dearest ; for one round golden day. 

To stand in his great chariot built of fire, 

Andt;hase the rosy hours from dawn to dusk, 

Guiding his fleeting steeds o'er heaven's floors. 

He gave to me. — No god yet brake his word. 

Speaking to me in sorrow : " my son. 

Know what my foolish pride hath made for thee. 

That mortal life which is to men a span, 

From childhood unto youth, and manhood's prime, 

Eeaching on out to happy olden age. 

For thee must shrink into one woeful day. 

For, my son, impetuous in thy pride. 

Who would be as the gods and ape their ways. 

And sacrilegious leave thy mortal bounds, — 

Know thou must die upon that baleful day. 

That terrible day of days thou mountest up 

To ride that chariot never mortal rode, 

And drive those steeds that never man hath driven." 

Then I — " My father, know me, thine own son, 

Better to me to live one day a god, 

Going out in some great flame of death. 

Than live this weary life of common men, 

Misunderstood, misunderstanding still. 

Half wakeful, moving dimly in a dream. 

Confused, phantasmic, men call history; 

Chasing the circles of the perishing suns. 

The summers and dim winters, hating all. 

Heart-eaten for a longing ne'er attained, 



214 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Despising all things named of earth or heaven, 

Or mortal birth that they should ever be ; 

Knowing within this mystery of my being, 

This curbed heredity, lies a latent dream 

Of some old vanished, banished, lease of being, 

When life was life and man's soul lived its bour, 

Uncurbed, uncabined, like the mighty gods. 

Vast, splendid, capable, and heraclean. 

To drain the golden beaker of his days." 

Thus I — " My father, I am over weary, 

Ciiained in this summer-plot of circumstance, 

Beaten by fearful custom, childish, chidden. 

Hounded of cruel wolves of superstition. 

And rounded by a petty wall of time. 

Plodding the dreary years that wend their round. 

Aping the sleeping, sensual life of beasts, 

Fearful of all things, dreading mostly death, 

Past pain and age and all their miseried end, 

Where all must rot, who smile and weep and sleep. 

And be a part of all this grim corruption. 

ISFay, better to me than the long-measured draught. 

Trickling out through many anxious years, 

Iron-eaten, haggard, to the place of death — 

To drain my flagon of life in one glad draught, — 

To live, to love, aspire, and dare all things; 

Be all I am and others ought to be, 

Keal man or demi-god, to blossom my rose. 

To scale my heights, to live my vastest dream, 

To climb, to be, and then, if chance my fate. 

To greatly fall." 

Then my great father, laden 
With woe divine, " My son, take thou thy way ; 
As thou hast chosen, thus 'twill be to thee ;" 
And passing, darkened down his godlike face 
And shadowed splendor thence for evermore.* 



PHAETHON 215 

'Twas night ambrosial down the orient meads, 
With stars like winking pearls, far-studding heaven. 
And dews all glorious on the bending stem. 
Odorous, passionate as the rose of sleep 
Half-budded on the throbbing heart of night; 
And in the east a glowing sapphire gloomed, 
When I awoke and lifted up mine eyes. 
And saw through rose and gold and vermeil dyes. 
And splendid mists of azure hung with pearl, 
HaTf-hid, half-seen, as life would apprehend. 
As in a sleep, the presence of dim death 
And fate and terrible gods, the car of day. 

Like morn within the morning, glad, it hung, 
Light hid in light, swift blinding all who saw. 
Dazzled, its presence; motionless though vibrate. 
Where it did swing athwart the deep-welled night, 
The heart of morning in the folds of dark. 
Pulsating sleep, and conquering death with life; 
So glowed its glory, folded, cloud in cloud, 
Gold within azure, purple shut in gold, 
The bud of morning pulsing ere it break, 
And spill its splendors many vermeil-dyed, 
Eeddening Ocean to his outmost rim. 

Here charmed dreams and drowsed magic hung. 
And winged hopes and rosy joys afloat 
Filled all the air, and I was short aware 
That this was life, and this mine hour supreme. 
To seize and act and be one with the gods. 
So dreamed I reckless when to think, to act. 
And moved, elate, with quick life-flaming step 
Athwart the meadow's budding asphodels. 
Song on my lip, and life at heart and eye, 
Exultant, breathing flame of pride and power. 



216 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Joy rose and sang, a bird, across the fields, 

Hope's rosy wings shot trembling to the blue, 

And courage with dauntless steps before me went. 

Brushing the veils of fierce cobwebby fires. 

And there, before me, sprawled grim ancient Power, 

A hideous Ethiop, huge in sodden sleep. 

The golden reins clutched in his titan hands. 

I snatched, leaped, shouted ; morning rose in flame. 

And ashweed paled to lily, lily blushed 

To ruddy crocus, crocus flamed to rose. 

And out of all, borne on the floors of light, 

I floated, gloried, up the orient walls. 

And all things woke, and sang of conquering day. 

Higher, yet higher, out of fiery mists, 
Filling those meadows of the dew-built dawn, 
Gloried and glorying, power clutched in my hand, 
Wreathed about in terrible spendors, I drave, 
Glowing, the dawn's gold coursers, champing steam 
Of snow and pearly foam from golden bridles. 
Forged in blue eidolon forges of the night. 
Beaten on steely anvils of the stars. 
These, champing, reared their fetlocks; breathing 

flame, 
In red, dew-draining lances, thundered on, 
'Wlielming night, as golden stair by stair 
They climbed the glimmering bridgeway of the day. 

Far under, wreathed in mists, old ocean swayed; 
And, cyclops-like, the bearded mountains hung. 
Vast shining rivers with their brimming floors 
And broad curved courses gleamed and glanced and 

shone. 
And loneliness and gloom and grey despair 



PHAETHON 217 

"With sombre hauntings fled to shuddering night. 

Hidden in caves and coral glooms of seas. 

Low down the east the morn's ambrosial meads 

Sank in soft splendors. Sphering out below, 

Gilded in morning, anchored the patient earth. 

Mountain and valley, ocean and wide plain. 

Opening to da^vn's young footsteps where we wheeled. 

And blossomed wide the rosebud of the day. 

Glory was mine, but greater, sense of power, 

Nor'marred by fear, as loftier we climbed, 

With glinting hoofs, that clanged the azure bridge 

That arched from dawning up to flaming noon. 

Dauntless my soul, and fiery-glad my heart, 

And " vastness," " vastness,'' sang through all my 

being. 
As gloved with adamant I guided on 
The day's red coursers up their flaming hill. 
To reach the mighty keystone of the day. 

All things conspired to build my upward road : 
The fitful winds of morning, the soft clouds, 
That fleece-like swept my cheek, the azure glint 
Of ocean swaying, restless, on his rim. 
Where slept the continents like a serpent curled 
In sleep, leviathan, huge, about the world. 

Then sudden all my waking turned to dream, 
A madness wherein, hideous, all things hung. 
Thought fled confused, and awful apprehension 
Shadowed my spirit, power and reason fled ; 
And, maddening, day's red coursers thundered on. 
Uncurbed, unguided by my palsied hand. 
Then with loud ruin, blundering from the bridge. 
Through space went swaying, now high up, now 
down. 



218 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Scattering conflagration and fierce death 

O'er earth's shrunk verges where their scorchings 

scarred. 
Time fled in terror, forests shriveled up, 
Ocean drew back in shudderings to his caves, 
Huge mountains shook and rumbled to their base, 
Great streams dried up, old cities smoked and fell. 
And all life met confusion and despair, 
And dread annihilation. 

Then the gods. 
Pitying wrecked nature, in their sudden vengeance, 
Me, impious, hurled from out my dizzying height. 
Time vanished, reason swooned, then left her throne, 
And darkness wrapt me as I shuddering fell. 
Oblivion-clouded, to the plunging seas. 
Ocean received me, folding in his deeps, 
Cooling and emerald. Here in coral dreams 
I rest and cure me, never wholly waking, 
Filled with one splendor, fumbling in a dream. 
As waves do fumble all about a cave, 
For one clear memory of that one high day. 

I failed, was mortal ; where I climbed I fell. 
But all else little matters ; life was mine, 
I dreamed, I dared, I grappled with, I fell ; 
And here I live it over in my dreams. 
All things may pass, decline, and come to naught, 
Death 'whelm life as day engulfed in dark ; 
But I have greatly lived, have greatly dared, 
And death will never wholly wrap me round 
And black me in its terrors. I am made 
One with the future, dwelling in the dreams 
And memories dread of envious gods and men. 



SIR LANCELOT 219 

Sir Lancelot 

He rode, a king, amid the armored knights, 
The glory of day tossing on helm and shield. 
And all the glory of his youth and joy 
In the strong, wine-like splendor of his face. 
He rode among them, the one man of men, 
Their lordliest, loveliest, he who might have been, 
Because of very human breadth of love, 
And his glad, winning sjonpathy for earth. 
Greater than even Arthur under heaven. 

Kindlier than the morning was his face. 

Swift, like the lightning, was his eagle glance. 

No bit of beauty earth had ever held. 

Of child or flower or dream of woman's face, 

Or noble, passing godliness of mood. 

In man toward man, but garnered in his eye. 

As in some mere that gathereth all earth's face. 

And foldeth it in beauty to its breast. 

He rode among them, Arthur's own right hand, 
Arthur, whom he loved as John loved Christ, 
And watched each day with joy that lofty brow 
Lift up its lonely splendor, isolate. 
Half godlike, o'er that serried host of spears ; 
And knew his love the kingliest, holiest thing, 
'Twixt man and man upon this glowing earth. 

So passed those days of splendor and of peace. 
When all men loved his majesty and strength 
And kindliness of spirit, which the king, 
Great Arthur, with his lofty coldness lacked. 



220 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

'Twas Lancelot fought the mightiest in the lists, 

And beat with thunders back the brazen shields, 

And stormed the fastness of the farthest isles, 

Slaying the grizzly warriors of the meres, 

And winning all men's fealty and love, 

And worship of fair women in the towers. 

Who laid their distaffs down to watch him pass ; 

And made the hot blood mantle each fair cheek, 

With sweet sense of his presence, till all men 

Called Arthur half a god, and Lancelot 

The greatest heart that beat in his great realm. 

Then came that fatal day that brake his life, 
When he, being sent of Arthur, all unknowing. 
Saw Guinevere, like some fair flower of heaven. 
As men may only see in dreams the gods 
Do send to kill the common ways of earth, 
And make all else but drear and dull and bleak; 
Such magic she did work upon his soul. 
Till Arthur, God, and all the Table Eound, 
Were but a nebulous mist before his eyes, 
In which the splendor of her beauty shone. 

Henceforth the years would rise and wane and die. 

And glory come and glory pass away. 

And battles pass as in a troubled dream, 

And Arthur be a ghost, and his laiights ghosts; — 

The castles and the lists and the mad fights. 

Sacking of cities, scourging of country-sides. 

All dreams before his eyes ; — all, save her love. 

So girded she her magic round his heart. 

And meshed him in a golden mesh of love, 

And marred his sense of all earth's splendor there. 

But in the after-days when brake the end. 
And she had fled to Glastonbury's cells. 



SIR LANCELOT 221 

With all the world one clamor at her sin ; 

And Arthur like a storm-smit pine-tree stood. 

Alone amid his kingdom's blackened ruins; — ■ 

Then Lancelot knew his life an evil dream, 

And thought him of the friendship of their youth, 

And all the days that they had been together, 

And " Arthur, Arthur," spake from all the meres. 

And " Arthur, Arthur," moaned from days afar. 

And-Lancelot grieved him of his woeful sin : — 

" And this the hand that smote mine Arthur down, 

That brake his glory, ruined his great hope 

Of one vast kingdom built on nol)le deeds. 

And truth and peace for many days to be. 

This hand that should have been his truest strength, 

Next to that high honor which he held." 

And all the torrents of his sorrow lirake 

For his own Arthur — Arthur standing lone. 

Like some unriven pine that towers alone 

Amid the awfiil ruins of a world. 

And then a woeful longing smote him there. 

To ride by murk and moon, by mere and waste, 

To where the king made battle with his foes. 

And look, unknown, upon his face, and die. 

So thinking this he fled, and the queen's wraith, 
A memory, in the moonlight fled with him. 
But stronger with him fled his gladder youth 
And all the memories of the splendid past. 
Until his heart yearned for the days that were. 
And that great, noble soul who fought alone. 

Then coming by cock-crow and the glimmering dawn, 
He reached the grey-walled castle of the land, 
Where the king tarried ere he went to fight 
The last dread battle of the Table Round. 



222 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

And the grim sentinels who guarded there, 

Thinking only of him as Arthur's friend, 

And knowing not the Lancelot scandal named, 

And judging by the sorrow of his face. 

Deemed him some knight who came to aid the king. 

And pointing past the waning beacon fires. 

Said, " There he sleeps as one who hath no woes." 

And Lancelot passing silent left them there. 
And entering the old abbey, ('twas some ruin 
Of piety and worship of past days,) 
Saw in the flicker of a dying hearth. 
Mingled with faint glimmering of the dawn, 
The great king sleeping, where a mighty cross 
Threw its dread shadow o'er his moving breast. 

And Lancelot knew the same strong, godlike face 
That he had worshipped in the days no more ; 
And all their olden gladness smote him now. 
And he had wept but that his awful sin, 
That made a wall of flame betwixt them there. 
Had seared the very fountains of his soul. 
Whereat he moaned, " noble, saintly heart, 
Couldst thou but know amidst thine innocent sleep, 
Save for the awful sin that flames between. 
That here doth stand the Lancelot of old days. 
The one of all the world who loved thee most. 
The joyous friend of all thy glorious youth; 
noble! godlike! Lancelot, who hath sinned 
As none hath sinned against thee, now hath come 
To gaze upon thy majesty and die. 
Arthur ! thou great Arthur of my youth, 
My sun, my joy, my glory !" 

Here the king 
Stirred in his sleep, and murmured, " Guinevere !" 



SIR LANCELOT 223 

And Lancelot, feeling that an age of ages, 
Hoary with all anguish of old crime 
And hideous bloodshed, were now builded up 
Betwixt him and the king at that one name. 
Clothed with the mad despairings of his shame, 
Stole like some shrunken ghost-life from that place. 
To look no more upon great Arthur's face. 

Then it did smite upon him he must die; 
And in him the old ghost of honor woke 
That he must die in battle, and go out 
Where no dread sorrow could gnaw at his heart. 
But all forgetting and eternal sleep. 

"UTiereat the madness of old battle woke. 
For his dread sin now burned all softness out. 
And the glad kindliness of the Table Bound, 
And left him, shorn of all the Christian knight, 
The gentle lord who only smote to save. 
Or shield the helpless from the brutal stroke; 
And flamed his heart there with the lust to slay, 
And slaying be slain as his grim sires went out. 

Then some far trumpet startled all the morn, 
Trembling westward from its dewy sleep. 
And with the day new battle woke the meres. 
And as a wood-wolf scents the prey afar. 
The noise of coming battle smote his ears, 
And woke in him the fierceness of his race. 
And the old pagan, joyous lust of fight. 
And crying, " Farewell, Arthur, mine old youth. 
Farewell, Lancelot, mine old kinder self, 
Lancelot, Arthur's brother, lie there low, 
Slain with the glory wherewithal you fell. 



224 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

While this new Lancelot, new-bred of old time, 
Before the new hope of the loftier day, 
Before the reign of mercy and glad law, 
Thunders in old madness forth to war." 

And as in some bleak ruin of a house 

Where all the sweet, home joys are ravaged out. 

And some grim, evil pack hath entered in 

To tear and snarl, so the old Lancelot passed. 

And where he closed the battle's fiercest shock 

Did hem him round, till as a mighty surf. 

That clamors, thundering round some seaward tower, 

Toward him the battle roared, and clanged his shield, 

And fast his blade went circling in the sun. 

Like some red, flaming wheel, where'er he went ; 

Nor cared for friend or foe, so that he slew, 

And drank his cup of madness to the dfeath. 

Till those he fought with dreamed a giant earl 

Of grim old days had come once more to earth. 

To fight anew the battles of his youth. 

But some huge islesmen of the west were there : 
And they were fain to hew him down, and came 
Like swift, loud storm of autumn at him there. 
Then there grew clamor of the reddest fight 
That ever man beheld, and all outside 
Were stayed in awe to see that one man fight 
With that dread host of wilding warriors there. 
ISTor stayed his awful brand, but left and right 
Whirled he its bloody flamings in the sun, 
And men went down as in October woods 
Do crash the mighty trunks before the blast. 
Till all were slain but one grim islesman left. 
But Lancelot by this was all one stream 
Of ruddy wounds, and like some fire his brain. 



THE WAYFARER 225 

And, with one awful shout of battle joy, 
He sent his sword-blade wheeling in the sun. 
And cleft that mighty islesman to the neck ; 
And crying, " Arthur !'' smote the earth, and died. 

Then spread such terror over all the foe, 

That gods did fight with them there, that they fled. 

And all that day the battle moved afar. 

Out to the west by distant copse and mere. 

Till cTied the tinnult, and the night came in. 

With mighty hush far over all that waste. 

And one Ijy one the lonely stars came out, 

And over the meres the wintry moon looked down. 

Unmindful of poor Lancelot and his wounds, 

His dead, lost youth, the stillness of his face. 

And all that awful carnage silent there. 



The Wayfarer 

He woke with the dawning, 
Met eyes with the sun, 

And drank the wild rapture 
Of living begun. 

But he went with the moment 

To follow the clue, 
Ere the first red of dawninff 

Had drunk the blue dew. 

Follow him, follow him. 
Where the world will. 

Under the sunlight 
By meadow and hill. 



226 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Down the blue distance, 
Eound the world's rim, 

Where the hosts of the future 
Are horning for him. 

Follow him, call to him, 
Pray to him. Sweet, 

Tell him the morning 
Is fresh for his feet; 

Sing him the rapture. 
The glamor, the gleam, 

Of pearly dew-azure 

That curtains the stream; 

Sing the glad thrush-note 
That never knew pain, 

But sing him and call him 
And pray him in vain. 

For ere the red dewdrop 
In sunlight was pearled. 

He heard that mad ocean 
That whelms the world. 

Yea, heard that voice calling 
Past sunlight and dew, 

That rarest, alluringest. 
Ever heart knew. 

That siren of sunrise. 
That weaver of songs. 

Till the heart of man hearkens 
And gladdens and longs. 



THE WAYFARER 227 

Till o'er the blue distance, 

As opens the rose, 
The yearning impulsion 

Of all his life goes. 

And many a dragon 

Chimera so grim, 
Down the dream of the morning 

Is vanquished by him. 

Yea, sing to him, call him through 

Heartache in vain; 
But the gladdest day wakened 

To glory, must wane. 

And the noonday he longed for 

To fierce light will burn, 
And the battles he wages 

Grow bitter and stern. 

And the surge of life sink 

To the moan of a bar, 
And the hopes of the morning 

Grow hollow and far; 

And the road that he follows. 

Less luring and true, 
Till he longs for a whiff 

Of the morning he knew. 

For he hears thy far singing. 

That lures not in vain. 
Till he comes to thy beauty 

Of morning again. 



15 



228 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

But the roads of returning 
Are never the same 

As the sweet dewy meadows 
Of morning we came. 

But the song of alluring 

Is ever as true. 
To lead the heart back 

To the beauty it knew. 

And vain the mad magic 
Where life's glories burn, 

For the heart of the yearner 
Who longs to return. 

Eor he hears that voice calling. 
Voiced never in vain. 

To world-heart aweary 
For all dreamings fain. 

And he hears the low grasses 
The green tents of sod, 

From rooftrees of slumber 
As voices of God. 

And the spinning and turning. 

Of madness amain, 
Fade out from his dreaming 

As night from the pane : 

When the rosy-red splendor 
In dew-dreams impearled, 
I From ashes of slumber, 

Lifts over the world. 



THE WAYFARER 229 

Yea, back to those echoes 

Of bugles that blew, 
Heart-weary, life-broken. 

He wanders to you ; 

Yea, back to his truest. 

Those far broken gleams 
Of that rosy-red, morning-lit 

House of his dreams. 

AVhere all hours were splendid. 

And all hearts held true. 
In those glory-lit visions 

Of beauty and you. 

Yea, call to him, cry to him. 

Mother of all; 
You lit his youth's torches. 

You saw their flames fall. 

You loved him, upheld him. 

This child of your breast ; 
And now give him surcease 

In dreamings and rest. 

Your note was the one note 

He heard in the fray, 
That bore him far out 

In the heat of the day; 

Your call is the one call 

That beckons him home. 
When day-fires darken 

By forest and foam. 



230 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

When o'er all the heartache, 

The visions untrue. 
Love draws her dim curtains 

Of duskfire and dew. 

"While the bells ring for slumber 

As out of the deep. 
Come pleading those velvet-winged 

Spirits of sleep. 

And there at your doorways 
Of slumber he stands. 

Like him of old Horeb, 
And sees his heart's lands; 

While under the white awe 
Of planets that swim, 

Knows dawning and even 
As one world to him. 



Peniel 

In a place of the mountains of Edom, 
And a waste of the midnight shore. 

When the evil winds of the desolate hills 
Beat with an iron roar; 

With the pitiless black of the desert behind, 
And the wrath of a brother before : — 

In a place of the ancient mountains, 
And the time of the midnight dead, 

Where the great wide skies of his father's land 
Loomed vastly overhead; 

Jacob, the son of the ancient of days, 
Stood out alone with his dread. 



PENIEL 231 

And there in that place of darkness, 
When the murk of the night grew dim. 

Under the wide rooftree of the world 
An unknown stood with him, — 

Whether a devil or angel of God, — 
With presence hidden and grim. 

And spake, " Thou son of Isaac, 
• On mountain and stream and tree. 
And this wide ruined world of night. 

Take thy last look with me : 
For out of the darkness have I come. 

To die, or conquer thee." 

Then Jacob made stern answer, 

" Until thy face I see. 
Though I strive with life or wrestle with 
death, 

Yet will I strive with thee: 
For better it were to die this hour 

Than from my fate to flee. 

" Yea, speak thy name or show thy face. 

Else shall I conquer thy will." 
But the other closed with an iron shock. 

Till it seemed the stars so still. 
With the lonely night, in a wheeling mist. 

Went round by river and hill. 

And Jacob strove as the dying strive. 

In the woe of that awful place. 
Yea, he fought with the desperate soul of one 

Who fights in evil case: 
And he called aloud in the pauses dread, 

" give me sight of thy facQ. 



232 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

" Yea, speak thy name, what art thou, spirit. 
Or man, or devil, or God? 
Yea, speak thy name !" But no voice came, 

From heaven or deep or sod: 
And the spirit of Jacob clave to his flesh 
As the dews in a dried-up clod. 

Then they rocked and swayed as Autumn 
storms 

Do rock the centuried trees: 
Yea, swayed and rocked : that other strove^ 

And drave him to his knees : 
And Jacob felt the wide world's gleam 

And the roar of unknown seas. 

Like to a mighty storm, it seemed. 

There thundered in his ears : 
And a mighty rushing water teemed. 

Like brooks of human tears : 
And opened the channels of his spent heart. 

And washed away his fears. 

And he rose with the last despairing strength 

Of life's tenacity. 
And he swore by the blood of man in him, 

And God's eternity, 
" 'Tis my life, my very soul he wants ; 

That he shall not have of me." 

Then his heart grew strong and he felt the 
earth 

Grow iron beneath his feet. 
And he drank the balmy airs of night 

Like rose-blooms rare and sweet : 
And his soul rose up as a welling brook, 

His life or death to meet. 



PENIEL 233 

And he spake to that unknown enemy there, — 

" By yon white stars I vow, 
That be thou devil or angel or man, 

Thou canst not conquer me now : 
For I feel new lease of life and strength 

In this sweat that beads my brow." 

They locked once more; the stars, it seemed, 

* Went round in dances dim. 

Where the great white watchers over each hill, 

With the black night, seemed to swim; 
But Jacob knew his enemy now 
Could nevermore conquer him. 

Yea, still with grip of death they strove. 

In iron might, until, 
Planet by planet, the great stars dropped 

Down over the westward hill : 
And Jacob stood like one who stands 

In the strength of a mighty will. 

Then at that late, last midnight hour. 

When the little birds rejoice, 
And out of the lands of sleep life looms 

With the rustle of day's annoys, 
That other spake as one who speaks 

With a sad despairing voice. 

And cried aloud, " I have met my fate. 

Loosen, and let me go : 
For I have striven with thee in vain, 
Till my heart is water and woe." 
" Nay, nay," cried Jacob, " we strive, Ave twain, 
Till the mists of dawning blow." 



2U POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Then spake that other, " I hate thee not, 

My spirit is spent, alas. 
Thou art a very lion of men, 

llelease, and let me pass; 
For thou hast my heart and sinew^s ground 

As ocean grinds his grass." 

Then answered Jacob, " Nay, nay, thou liar. 

This is the lock of death ; 
For thee or me it must be thus, 

The will of my being saith. 
Thou man or devil, I hold thee here 

Unto thy latest breath. 

" For I do feel in thee I hold 

My life's supremest hour : 
I would as lief let all life slip 

As thee from out my power. 
Until I gaze on thy hid face. 

And read my spirit's dower. 

" Yea, show thy face or who thou art, 

Or man or angel or fiend, 
I rend thy being fold from fold, 

And scatter thee to the wind." 
Then they twain rocked as passions roclc, 

When madness wrecks the mind. 

For each now knew this was the end. 

And one of them must die, 
Then Jacob heaved a mighty breath, 

With a last great sobbing cry. 
And gripped that other in a grip 

Like the grip of those who die. 



PENIEL 235 

For he felt once more his spirit faint, 
And his strong knees quake beneath, 

And it seemed the mountains ^amed all red 
At the coming of his breath; 

And he prayed if he were conquered now 
That this might be his death. 

The tight grip eased, the huge form slipped 
■ Back earthward with a moan. 
And Jacob stood there 'neath the dawn, 

Like one new-changed to stone; 
For in the face of the prone man there 

He read his very own. 

Not as man sees who reads his fellows 

In the dim crowds that pass ; 
Nor as a soul may know himself. 

Who looks within a glass; 
But as God sees, who kneads the clay. 

And parts it from the mass. 

And over his head the great day rose 

And gloried leaf and wing. 
And the little boughs began to tremble, 

And the little birds to sing; 
But on his face there shone a strength 

Like the power of a new-crowned king. 



236 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



L.ain 

My hand is red with brother blood. 
My heart is bleak with woe, 

'Mid dark despairs a bitter brood, 
Forth, forth alone I go. 

By mists of dread fierce hate I grope 
Forth over a wide, wide sea; 

For out from love and light and hope 
My sin hath driven me. 

Dread, dread the portals that I face. 
The foes that front me there. 

And evermore back, back I trace 
Old roads of death's despair. 

And by the crowded demon mart. 

Or by the haunted sea. 
Manacled, close heart to heart. 

My brute sin stalks with me. 

And often in my middle sleep 

I dream I see its face, 
As one looks down into a deep 

And sees an evil place 

Of hideous holes, where slimy things 
Of horror and strange woe 

Eound, round forever in weird rings 
Of endless motion go. 

And ever round me closes in 
A wall both black and dread. 



CAIN 237 

It is my sin, mine evil sin 
That binds me to the dead. 

Nor am I desolate where I track 

The deserts bleak and wide; 
For the great God, a shadow black, 

Moves ever by my side. 

I feel Him 'mid the morning dews, 

And at the dread midnight; 
For He alone will never lose 

The murderer from His sight. 

Nor brings He peace. I could not steal 

A sense of happiness; 
But some grim law that makes me feel 

The manacles' caress. 

A sense of One who ever goes 

And bears my load with me, 
Down roads of grim and hideous woes 

And horrid agony. 

Down, down, where things of doom and dree 

And demon fancies ride; 
And ever, ever as I flee. 

That shadow by my side. 

And dread, more dread than all, hath been 

That sense of woe in me, 
To know His greatness, and my sin 

That parts us like a sea ; 

As down weird worlds of bale and blight 

My tortured way I trace. 
And ever before me blinded night 

That smites the murderer's face. 



238 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



Lazarus 

Father Abram, I can never rest 

Here in thy bosom in the whitest heaven, 
Where love blooms on through days without an 

even; 
For up through all the paradises seven. 
There comes a cry from some fierce, anguished 
breast. 

A cry that comes from out of hell's dark night, 

A piercing cry of one in agony. 

That reaches me here in heaven white and high; 

A call of anguish that doth never die, 
Like dream- waked infant wailing for the light. 

Father Abram, heaven is love and peace. 
And God is good ; eternity is rest. 
Sweet would it be to lie upon thy breast 
And know no thought but loving to be blest. 

Save for that cry that nevermore will cease. 

It comes to me above the angel-lyres, 
The chanting praises of the cherubim ; 
It comes between my upward gaze and Him, 
All-blessed Christ. A voice from the vague dim, 
" Lazarus, come, and ease me of these fires! 

" Lazarus, I have called thee all these years. 
It is so long for me to reach to thee. 
Across the ages of this mighty sea, 
That loometh darlc, dense, lilce eternity. 
Which I have bridged by anguished prayers and 
tears. 



tt 



LAZARUS 239 

Which I have bridged hy Icnowledge of God's Jove, 
That even penetrates this anguished glare; 
A gleaming ray, a tremulous star-built stair, 
A road by which love-hungered souls may fare 

Past hate and doubt, to heaven and God above." 

So calleth it ever upward unto me. 

It creepeth in through heaven's golden doors, 
It echoes all along the sapphire floors, 
Like smoke of sacrifice, it soars and soars. 

It fills the vastness of eternity. 

Until my sense of love is waned and dimmed, 
The music-rounded spheres do clash and jar, 
No more those spirit-calls from star to star, 
The harmonies that float and melt afar, 

The belts of light by which all heaven is rimmed. 

No more I hear the beat of heavenly wings. 
The seraph chanting in my rest-tuned ear; 
I only know a cry, a prayer, a tear, 
That rises from the depths up to me here; 

A soul that to me suppliant leans and clings. 

Father Abram, thou must bid me go 
Into the spaces of the deep abyss ; 

Where far from us and our God-given bliss. 
Do dwell those souls that have done Christ amiss ; 
For through my rest I hear that upward woe. 

1 hear it crying through the heavenly night, 
When curved, hung in space, the million moons 
Lean planet-ward, and infinite space attunes 
Itself to silence, as from drear grey dunes 

A cry is heard along the shuddering light. 



240 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Of wild dusk-bird, a sad, heart-curdling cry, 

So comes to me that call from out hell's coasts; 
I see an infinite shore with gaping ghosts ; 
This is no heaven, with all its shining hosts; 

This is no heaven until that hell doth die. 

So spake the soul of Lazarus, and from thence. 
Like new-fledged bird from its sun- jeweled nest, 
Drunk with the music of the young year's quest. 
He sank out into heaven's gloried breast, 

Spaceward turned, toward darkness dim, immense. 

Hellward he moved like a radiant star shot out 
From heaven's blue with rain of gold at even, 
When Orion's train and that mysterious seven 
Move on in mystic range from heaven to heaven. 

Hellward he sank, followed by radiant rout. 

The liquid floor of heaven bore him up 
With unseen arms, as in his feathery flight 
He floated down toward the infinite night; 
But each way downward, on the left and right. 

He saw each moon of heaven like a cup 

Of liquid, misty fire that shone afar 

From sentinel towers of heaven's battlements; 
But onward, winged by love's desire intense. 
And sank, space-swallowed, into the immense. 

While with him ever widened heaven's bar. 

'Tis ages now long-gone since he went out, 

Christ-urged, love-driven, across the jasper walls. 
But hellward still he ever floats and falls. 
And ever nearer come those anguished calls; 

And far behind he hears a glorious shout. 



AHMET 241 

Ahmet 

This poem is founded on an old legend of North Africa, related 
by the late R. G. Haliburton, the noted ethnologist. According to 
tradition the ancient races of North Africa believed the constellation 
of the Pleiades to be the souls of a chieftain and six warriors, slain in 
battle, who are shut out from heaven and doomed to wander forever 
through space in search of the soul of the eighth warrior, which is 
identified with the lost Pleiad. 

And still the mighty river drifted on, 
Under the shadowed night and moving mists, 
And towered the iron mountains, dark and stern, 
Under the arctic whiteness of the north. 
And out of the far horizon's sullen edge 
The night-winds stirred amid the lonely dead. 
Stark, moveless, gazing upward at the skies. 
Where silent and cold the unanswering stars 
looked down. 

And Ahmet raised him from the battle-field. 
Where stunned he lay, beneath a Tartar horse 
Huge, stiff and dead, transfixed by a spear; 
And left the awful plateau of the dead. 
And stood upon the high-raised river bank, 
Beneath the white stars of the wintry heaven, 
And moved himself, and beat the life-blood back 
Into the death-like torpor of his veins. 
And looked abroad, where all the night lay still 
And dim with murk far over that lone waste. 
Leagues to the north, under the mighty Bear, 
Folded in fog, a fleeting silver dream. 
The river moved and sang into the dark. 
Under the frosty splendor of the stars. 

And Ahmet stood and gazed into the night. 
And lifted his face up to those watchful lights 



242 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

That looked from out their lonely homes on 

him; 
And saw the Pleiades, a tangled mist 
Of moveless jewels in the sky's blue deep, 
Or pale grape-cluster in some great god's hand. 

And felt the old religion of his race, — 

A nomad people on the northern steppes, 

Who wandered from place to place tracking their 

gods — 
The stern, white wanderers of the trackless 

heaven — 
Beat in the stirring pulses of his blood. 
And Ahmet prayed in his heart's agony. 
Unto the fathers of his race, the gods, 
For his own people in their distant home, 
And for himself on this lone, desolate waste. 
And the great dead, who battling through that 

day. 
Went to the gods from off their foemen's spears. 
Then rang his song of triumph to the night, 
Of those his blade loosed to the land of death. 
Treading the carnage on that awful field; 
Then ceased, nor ever echo answered there, 
Save the far moaning of some mountain beast 
Haunting the jungle by some night-ward shore. 
And never a sound came over that lone waste. 
Where the far mountains raised their iron heads, 
And the great river sang its sleep below. 
Then strode he past the pallor of the night. 
Like some huge shadow 'mid the shadows there. 
Unto the unwaked slumber of that plain ; 
And moved amid the hushed and sombre dead. 
Awful and stern in their last, silent sleep. 
With clotted blood congealed on shield and helm, 
And stony faces staring at the stars. 



AHMET 243 

Great blade or spear still clasped in each dead 

hand; 
And came to where the young bo3''-chieftain lay, 
The last grim prince of his rude southern race, 
With whom he rode to battle yester morn, 
Now stark and motionless beneath the stars. 
With his life's foeman, silent, face to face! 

And Ahmet lifted up his sombre face 
To the white heaven and the stars, his gods, 
And moaned, " awful rulers of my race. 
Looking from out the mighty deeps on me. 
Ye who on radiant thrones of splendid light. 
From out your far halls gaze upon this earth ; 
And know, perchance, her motions through the 

deep. 
Her changes and her seasons, and perchance 
The strange, weird agony and joy of man. 
Who rises from her breast, as some dim mist, 
Then sinks forever on her meres again : 
Know ye that unto me this night is given 
The woeful part to answer for the dead 
Unto you gods, who rule the afterworld. 
My part it is to bury this great King, 
The mighty son of a once mighty race. 
Now 'tis for me to hollow his last bed, 
And lay the holy earth upon his face, 
His breast and limbs, and shut him from the 

light. 
So that ye gods, in looking from your thrones, 
May see no part of what is shape of him, 
And curse him, banished from your halls forever. 

" Yea, more ; in keeping with that ancient law. 
Stern and relentless, given to my race, 
And handed down the generations long, 
16 



244 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

And kept by us with solemn reverence, 
I must this night find seven of our kin, 
"Who went out here upon this battle-field, 
And lay their shapes of them with decent care, 
Stark, side by side, in this young prince's grave. 
Ere the white god of dawning pales yon east ; 
Or else this prince, beloved, noble, brave. 
Who hath gone out in his old foe's embrace, 
Must ever, doomed, wander the trackless way. 
Shut out from all the homes of your white 

splendor 
And searching forever, — like some lonesome wind 
Beating about the hollow halls of night." 

Then wresting a blade from some grim foeman's 

hand. 
Strode once more outward to the river's bank. 
Where the great waters moved beneath the mist; 
And never a night-bird called from bank to bank, 
But the cold river mists encircled him. 
And there he toiled with quick, despairing will. 
And made an opening in the wind-swept sands, 
Eed, desert-blown, adown the centuries. 
The solemn night-winds crept about his toil. 
Loosening the mists along the lonesome shores. 
And now a slinking jackal Avandered past, 
Then stole to some far shadow of the field 
To his weird feast upon the unburied dead. 

Then with stern face, across the lonely field, 
Like some great hero of the olden days 
Working by night some splendid titan deed, 
Or, as the shadow of some olden god, 
Paying by night the last, sad, hallowed rites, 
Over the form of some great chieftain slain; 



AHMET 245 

With reverent duty to the spirit fled, 

Bare he the dead young king with awful toil 

Unto the grave that he had hollowed there, 

With six men more, and laid them in that grave, 

With faces fixed, limbs rigidly composed, 

And mute, dull eyes, dumb, staring at the stars. 

Then went again with agonizing tread, 

As a young lioness might hunt her cub 

In some great slaughter of huge Jungle beasts. 

And circle dumb, yet never find him there ; 

So he in vain, amid the silent dead. 

Searching the heaps, went through the haunted 

dark, 
Praying the gods in his great, dread despair. 
Then, sorrowing back, came to the high-raised 

bank. 
And saw the lonely river and the night, 
The iron mountains, and those dead men there ! 

And now it seemed to Ahmet, standing by. 
That out of the sombre shadow of that pit 
Those silent faces pleaded with him there. 
And well he knew that somewhere off afar 
In outer space, this side Valhalla's gates. 
These seven souls awaited heaven's doom. 
With that a bitter sorrow filled his soul 
For those, his warrior-comrades lying dead, 
And that young prince whom he had loved so 

well: 
That they should never see Valhalla's doors 
Wide-open to the welcome din within. 
Of mighty warriors at eternal feasts. 
And glorious songs of titan battle-joy, 
Of lofty heroes, told unto the gods. 
" jSTor could I enter there myself/' he dreamed, 



246 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

" And know their joy, if that I die not here. 
And did I now wend backward to my home. 
And live mine after days in earthly peace, 
And turn mine aged face upward by my hearth, 
Surrounded by my loved, in days to come : 
Could I a warrior, to the Warrior-gods 
Go in, nor answer for those dead ones there, 
And meet their hero faces without shame, 
And know these poor ones wandering in the dark, 
Despairing ever through the endless years." 

Whereat he rose and looked up to the stars. 
And spake : " Mighty Ones, it is well seen 
That I must know mine olden home no more. 
But I must end me here on this dread plain, 
Loosening my soul, even that these poor men 
May know the golden glory of the gods ; 
Eeturning never to the ones I love." 
Whereat a great sob rent his anguished frame. 
And all his face, across the shadowed light. 
Showed with a bitter woe, for he was young. 
Scarce yet a man, and this his first of battles, 
Where he had come in his fierce warrior-Joy, 
For that glad love wherewith he loved the king. 
And far at home his aged father sat. 
And his old mother, mourning for their son; 
And in the dark he saw his betrothed's eyes 
Soften to tears at memory of his name. 
Whereat deep anguish smote his strong young 

breast. 
And looking to the sky, cried out : " Gods ! 
Is there no way ? A sign ! great Gods, a sign V 
Whereat a splendid meteor blazed and fell 
Across the silent wonder of the night. 
Girding the horizon to the iron hills. 



AHMET 247 

And then a thrill of greatness shook him there. 
For now he knew for certain he must die. 
And looking on the dead face of the prince. 
He spake : " noble soul and brave and true ! 
Great heart that never fled from human face, 
Nor yet would go back from some wondrous 

doom, 
Such as is laid on thy loved comrade here ! 
That such dread woes are fallen from the gods, 
'Tis not for souls like mine to question why. 
But I will follow whithersoe'er thou goest, 
Thunder thy shadow-steed o'er trackless heaven. 
Or to the brink of floorless night and hell. 
Yet comrade, friend, forgive thine Ahmet here. 
If he finds woman's grief for what he leaves. 
Like thee, I never more will see my home. 
My boyhood's country in its golden prime: — 
The happy hearths and plains we loved of yore. 
No more must see the parents of my youth, 
Nor guard their age, nor close their sightless 

eyes, 
Nor know the joys of husband or of sire. 
Of children's prattle, glad about the knees. 
The loved home comforts, and the wintry fire. 
And all the glories of this splendid world. 
All these must I forego, nor know old age. 
And the last peace at golden life's decline. 
Because of some weird doom that hath been mine. 
Given of old, from out the mighty gods." 
Then ceased, and, with soft hands of loving care, 
Took earth and laid it on the dead young king : — 
Upon his face and his still, rigid limbs ; 
And said : " I now commend thee to the gods." 
Likewise, in turn, he did unto the others. 
As was the ancient custom of his race. 



248 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Then Ahmet rose and stood in his own grave, 
And bearing in his hand the naked blade, 
Spake : " Now am I resolved with conquering 

hand 
To cleave this murky curtain of my flesh, 
And hew a doorway past these walls of life 
Unto the outer splendor of the gods. 
And ye, white watchers of the wheeling world, 
ancient makers of my doom. Behold ! 
lonesome desert, wintry to the south, 

luminous stream and desolate iron hills ; 
Your glory will fall on Ahmet's eye no more ! 
And thou, my love, whose holy love was mine, 
Snatched by the fates from my too passionate 

grasp. 
Thou wilt know sorrow when thine Ahmet's gone. 
Yea, thou wilt sit across the wintry years. 
Turning thy wheel by morn or sunset door. 
Brooding upon a face that comes no more! 
And ye my parents ! One will hobbling go 
Past the familiar haunts and quarrel with death 
Who claimed the wrong one first. The other, she. 
Will croon, with grief-filled face, the fire beside. 
Peopling in vain the home with olden dreams. 
And all the joyous sounds that should have been. 
Farewell, glorious stars, and sun and moon. 
Now I go out upon this journey dread, 

1 hear my charger, slain this early morn. 
Neighing beyond the gates of outer dark. 
Watching for the master who should come.'* 
Then lifting up his strong face to the skies. 
Took one last look on all the wheeling worlds, 
And with glad challenge to the foeman dark, 
Struck home the thirsting blade to his proud 

heart. 
And with one mighty shout there backward fell ! 



THE ELF-LOVER 249 

Then there was heard a thunder of shadowy- 
hoofs 
That out of the deep wells of the night swept 

past; 
And as they went a riderless steed there neighed 
Joyously, to him who leaped to saddle, 
With splendid mien of conqueror just returned 
Erom some far titan battle of the gods; 
Then all swept up the steep, sheer depths of 

heaven. 
Thundering up the glorious slopes of blue, 
Striking fire-hoofs upon the flinty air. 
Onward to the ramparts of the skies. 
Where some day through long ages they will 

scale. 
And clang the golden gates and enter in. 

But still the mighty river drifted on 
Beyond the night to meet the coming day; 
Beyond the iron mountains and the dark. 
And out of the wintry radiance of the stars 
There grew a beauty of the lonely night, 
That clothed those mighty dead, and came and 

fell. 
Like on some peak that fronts the far-off dawn, 
On Ahmet's face, a silent majesty. 



The Elf-Lover 

It was a haunted youth ; he spake 
Beneath the beechen shade : 
" An' hast thou seen my love go past, 
A sunny, winsome maid? 



250 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

" An' hast tliou seen my love fare past. 
Her face with life aflame? 
The leaves astir her footsteps tell. 
The soft winds blow her name. 

" 'Twas when the autumn days were still, — 
It seemeth but an hour, — 
I met her on the gold hillside 
When elfin loves had power. 

" Her voice was like the sound of brooks. 
Her face like some wild bloom; 
And in the beauty of her look 
I read mine ancient doom. 

" And when the world in mist died out 
Down toward some evening land. 
Betwixt the glinting golden-rod 
We two went hand in hand. 

" And when the moon a golden disk 
Above the night hills came, 
Down in a world of midnight haze 
I kissed her lips aflame. 

" But when the moon was hidden low 
Behind each spectre tree ; 
She loosed from my sad arms and bent 
A startled look on me. 

" (While wound from out some haunted dusk 
A far-off elfin horn,) 
Like one on sudden woke from sleep. 
And fled into the morn. 

" I follow her, I follow her. 
But never more may see. 



THE WERE-WOLVES 251 

The crimson dawn, the stars of night 
Know what she is to me. 

" I ne'er can rest, I ne'er can stay, 
But speed from place to place; 
For all my heart is flamed with that 
Wild glamor of her face. 

" I know her soft arms in my dreams, 
* All wound about my sleep; 
I seem to hear her silvern voice 
In all the winds that creep. 



it 



saw you not her come this way. 
By boughs in waters glassed? 

So slight her form, so soft her step. 
You'd think a moon ray passed. 



" tell me did you see her wend ? 
And whence to hill or sea? 
The ruddy dawn, the stars of night. 
Know what she is to me." 



The Were- Wolves 

They hasten, still they hasten, 

From the even to the dawn; 
And their tired eyes gleam and glisten 

Under north skies white and wan. 
Each panter in the darkness 

Is a demon-haunted soul. 
The shadowy, phantom were-wolves. 

Who circle round the Pole. 



252 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Their tongues are crimson flaming, 

Their haunted blue eyes gleam, 
And they strain them to the utmost 

O'er frozen lake and stream; 
Their cry one note of agony. 

That is neither yelp nor bark. 
These panters of the northern waste, 

Who hound them to the dark. 

You may hear their hurried breathing. 

You may see their fleeting forms. 
At the pallid polar midnight, 

When the north is gathering storms ; 
When the arctic frosts are flaming. 

And the ice-field thunders roll; 
These demon-haunted were-wolves, 

Who circle round the Pole. 

They hasten, still they hasten. 

Across the northern night. 
Filled with a frighted madness, 

A horror of the light; 
Forever and forever, 

Like leaves before the wind, 
They leave the wan, white gleaming 

Of the dawning far behind. 

Their only peace is darkness. 

Their rest to hasten on 
Into the heart of midnight, 

Forever from the dawn. 
Across far phantom ice-floes 

The eye of night may mark 
These horror-haunted were-wolves 

Who hound them to the dark. 



THE WERE-WOLVES 253 

All through this hideous journey 

They are the souls of men 
Who in the far dark-ages 

Made Europe one black fen. 
They fled from courts and convents, 

And bound their mortal dust 
With demon, wolfish girdles 

Of human hate and lust. 

These, who could have been godlike. 

Chose, each a loathsome beast, 
Amid the heart's foul graveyards, 

On putrid thoughts to feast ; 
But the great God who made them 

Gave each a human soul. 
And so 'mid night forever 

They circle round the Pole. 



A-praying for the blackness, 

A-longing for the night, 
For each is doomed forever 

By a horror of the light; 
And far in the heart of midnight, 

Wliere their shadowy flight is hurled, 
They feel with pain the dawning 

That creeps in round the world. 

Under the northern midnight. 

The white, glint ice upon, 
They hasten, still they hasten, 

With their horror of the dawn; 
Forever and forever. 

Into the night away 
They hasten, still they hasten 

Unto the judgment day. 



254 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



The Vengeance of Saki 

When the moon is red in the heaven, and under the 

night 
Is heard on the winds the thunder of shadowy horses. 
Then out of the night I arise, and again am a woman ; 
And leap to the back of an ebon steed that knows me, 
And hound him on in the wake of hoofs that thunder, 
Of smoking nostrils, and gleaming eyes, and foam- 
flecked 
Flanks that glow and flash in the flow of the moon- 
light; 
While under the mirk and the moon, out into the 

blackness, 
Eound the world's edge with an eerie, mad, echoing 

laughter. 
Leaps the long cry of the hate of the wild snake-woman. 
Ha! Ha! it is joy for the hearts that we crush as we 

thunder ! 
Ho ! Ho 1 for the hate of the winds that laugh to my 

laughter ! 
Ha! Ha! it is well for the shriekings that pass into 

silence ! 
As under the night, out into the blackness forever, 
Eides the wild hate of Saki, the mad snake-woman ! 

I was a girl of the South, with eyes as tender 
And dreamy and soft and true as the skies of my people. 
But I was a slave and an alien captured in battle. 
And brought to the North by a people ruder and 

stronger. 
Who held me as naught but a toy, to be played with and 

broken. 
Then thrown aside like a bow that is snapped asunder. 



THE VENGEANCE OF SAKI 255 

Lithe and supple my limbs as the sinuous serpent, 
And quick as the eye and the tongue of the serpent 

mine anger 
That flashed out the fire of my hate on the scorn of my 

scorners. 
But hate soon softened to love, as fire into sunlight, 
When my eyes met the eyes of the chieftain, my lord, 

and my master. 
Sweet ^ the flowers that bloom on the blossoming 

prairie, 
Gladder than voices of fountains that dance in the 

sunlight. 
Were the new and tremulous fancies that dwelt in my 

bosom ; 
For he was my king and my sun, and the power of his 

glance 
To me as at springtime the returning sun to the land- 
scape. 
And his touch and the sound of his voice that set my 

heart throbbing. 

Sweet were the days of the summer I dwelt in his tent. 
And glad and loving the nights that I lay on his bosom. 
But woe, woe, woe, to the summer that fades into 

autumn. 
And woe upon woe is the love that dwindles and dies, 
And ere my hot heart was abrim with its summer of 

loving 
I knew that its autumn had come, that his love was 

another's — 
A blue-eyed haughty captive they brought from the 

East, 
Her hair like moving sunlight that rippled and ran 
With the golden flow of a brook from her brow to her 

girdle. 



256 



POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



He saw her, he looked on her face, and I was for- 
gotten — 
Yea, I and the love that fed on my soul in its anguish. 

Ha ! Ha ! it is joy for the hearts that we crush as we 

thunder ! 
Ho ! Ho ! for the hate of the winds that laugh to my 

laughter ! 
Ha ! Ha ! it is well for the shriekings that pass into 

silence ! 
As under the night, out into the darkness forever, 
Eides the wild hate of Saki, the mad snake-woman! 



I bowed my head with its woe to him in my anguish; 
I veiled my face in my hair like the night of my sorrow ; 
And I pled with him there by the love that was true 

and forgiving: 
Oh ! my lord and my love, by the days that are past of 

our loving, 
Oh ! slay thy poor Saki, but send her not forth in her 

anguish ! 
And I fell to the earth with my face, like the moon hid 

in heaven, 
In the folds of my hair. But he sate there and uttered 

no answer; 
And the white woman sate there, and scorned at the 

woe of my sorrow. 
Then I bit my tongue through that pled for the pity 

ungiven, 
And I rose with my hate in my eyes, like the lightning 

in heaven 
That leaps red to kill, with a hiss like the snake that 

they called me; 
And I looked on them there, and I cursed them, the 

man and the woman — 



THE VENGEANCE OF SAKI 257 

The man whose lips had kissed my love into being, 
And the woman whose beauty had withered that love 

into ashes — 
With curses so dread and so deep that he rose up and 

smote me. 
And hounded me forth like a dog to die in the desert. 

Ha! Ha! it is joy for the hearts that we crush as we 

thunder ! 
Ho ! Ho ! for the hate of the winds that laugh to my 

laughter ! 
Ha ! Ha ! it is well for the shriekings that pass into 

silence ! 
As under the night, out into the blackness forever, 
Rides the wild hate of Saki, the mad snake-woman ! 

Then wandered I forth an outcast hounded and beaten; 

Careless whither I went or living or dying, 

With that load of despair at my heartstrings wearing to 

madness. 
Long and loud I laughed at the heaven that mocked me 
With its beautiful sounds and its sights and the joy of 

its being. 
For I longed but to die and to go to that region of 

darkness 
Where T might shroud me and curse in my madness 

forever. 
Far, oh, far I fled till my feet were wounded 
And bruised and cut by the ways unkindly and cruel. 
Then all the world grew red and the sun as a furnace. 
And I raved till I knew no more for a horrible season. 
Then I arose, and stood like one in a dream 
Who, after long years of forgetting, sudden remembers 
The dread wild cry of a wrong that clamors for 

righting. 



258 



POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



Then sending a curse to the heart of the night sky, I 

turned me 
And fled like the wind of the winter, the sound of whose 

footstep is vengeance. 
Late, when the moon had lowered, I entered his village. 
And threading the silent streets came to the well-known 

tent-door. 
And dragging aside the skins with serpentine motion 
Entered now as a thief where once I had entered as 

mistress. 
And there in the gleam of the moon, with the flame of 

her hair on his bosom. 
Lay the woman I hated as hell hates, the man I loved 

clasped to her heart. 

Ha! Ha! it is joy for the hearts that we crush as we 

thunder ! 
Ho ! Ho ! for the hate of the winds that laugh to my 

laughter ! 
Ha ! Ha ! it is well for the shriekings that pass into 

silence ! 
As under the night, out into the blackness forever, 
Rides the wild hate of Saki, the mad snake-woman! 

If hate could have slain they'd have shriveled up there 
in the moonlight; 

But theirs was a sin too deep for the kiss of a knife- 
blade. 

Long did I stand like a poisoned wind in a desert, 

Grey and sad and despairing, and nursing my hate ; 

When out of the night, like one voice that calls to 
another. 

Came the far-off neigh of a horse, and a mad joy leaped 
to my veins. 

And a thought curled into my heart as a serpent coils 
into a flower; 



THE VENGEANCE OF SAKI 259 

And I turned me, and left them there in their foolish 
love and their slumber 

That my hot heart hissed was their last. 

Then hurrying out of the door that flapped in the 
night-wind I fled, 

With a pent-up hunger of hate that maddened to burst 
from its sluices, 

And came to a place on the plain far up and out from 
the village. 

Where fethered in rows of hurdles, champing and rest- 
less and neighing. 

Half a thousand horses were herded under the night. 

Ha ! Ha ! I live it anew, I dream it again in my 

madness. 
I see that moving ocean of shimmering flanks in the 

moonlight. 
I snatch a brand from a watchfire that smoulders and 

dwindles ; 
I creep around to the side of the herd remote from the 

village, 
I cry a low call, that is answered by a neigh and a 

whinny. 
Then I leap to the back of an ebon stallion that Icnows 

me. 
'Tis but the cut of a thong, a cry in the night, 
A fiery waving brand like lightning to thunder, 
A terrified moaning and neighing, a heaving of necks 

and of haunches; 
A bound, a rush, a crack of a thong, then a whirlwind 

of hoofs ! 
Like a sweep of a wave on a beach we are thundering 

onwards. 
Neck and neck in the wake of my hate, that ever before 

us 
Clamors from heaven to hell in its terrible vengeance ! 
17 



260 



POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



With neck outstretched and mad eyes agleam in the 

gloaming, 
I see on ahead the sleeping huts in the moonlight. 

Ha! Ha! they will rest well under the sleep that we 

bring them ! 
See, see, we are nearing them now; the first wild 

thundering hoof-beats 
Have ridden them down, 'mid the shriekings and 

groanings of anguish, 
Blotting them out with their loves and their hates into 

blacloiess. 
Ha! Ha! ride, ride, my beauties, my terrible tramplers! 
Pound, pound into dust the mother, the child, and the 

husband ! 
Pound, pound to the pulse of my hate that exults in 

your thunders ! 
Ha! over the little ones nestled to suckle the bosom, 
Over the man that I loved, we thunder, Ave thunder ! 
Over the woman I hate with the flame of her hair on 

his bosom; 
Trampling, treading them down out into silence and 

blackness. 
Like the swirl of a merciless storm we sweep on to 

darlcness forever! 

And now, when the moon is in heaven, and under the 

night 
Is heard on the winds the thunder of shadowy horses. 
Then out of the dark I arise, and again am a woman; 
And leap to the back of an ebon steed that knows me, 
And hound him on in the wake of hoofs that thunder; 
While under the mirk and the moon, out into the 

blackness, 
Eound the world's edge with an eerie, mad, echoing 

laughter. 
Leaps the long cry of the hate of the wild snake-woman. 



THE LAST RIDE 



261 



Ha! Ha! it is joy for the hearts that we crush as we 

thunder ! 
Ho ! Ho I for the hate of the winds that laugh to my 

laughter ! 
Ha! Ha! it is well for the shriekings that pass into 

silence ! 
As under the night, out into the blackness forever, 
Eides the wild hate of Saki, the mad snake-woman ! 



The Last Ride 



It seems his 
soul had lived 
that moment 
before, when 
he should come 
to the dread 
place. 



I KNEW of it ages before. 

Yea, it seemed that the years knew it too; 

That I should come to that shore, 

"Where the foam and the wild waters flew — 

Where the winds and the bleak night 

blew ; — 
And the name of that place, No More. 



That he and 
she and death 
should ride 
together. 



I knew of it ages ago, 

That I should thunder tliat ride. 

With her and the night for my woe — 

With her and death by my side — 

Her and her pitiful pride; — 

And the long hours whose shudd'ring flow 



AVhere the 
black was as 
Eblis, and the 
sounds as 
worms moving 
in a grave. 



Grew, while the black grew thick 

As the close, hot air of a cave 

In Eblis, where death-watches tick. 

Like the moving of worms in a grave ; — 

Grew, till the dawn outdrave 

The black night, shudd'ring and sick. 



262 



POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



The niime8 
chant their 
despair to the 
night. 



Who were the mimes in the air 

That wept for the woe of our flight, 

That chanted a bitter despair, 

To the dark, haunted heart of the night- 

That knew not of wrong or of right. 

Save but of the moments that were ? 



He sees the 
past, as ruined 
sunsets, and 
the early morn- 
ing of life. 



The ruins of sunsets that hung 
On the far, reeling edge of the world ; — 
The long-uttered thoughts that upsprung 
Like the ghosts of a past that was furled, 
Where the dreams of a life were impcarled, 
In a morning for evermore young ! 



She also knew 
the demons 
that haunted. 



And she; she knew even as I, 
Of the phantoms that haunted us there; 
Of the demons that never could die, 
While the world's heart pulsed our despair ; 
And out where the mad waters fare. 
The ghostly, wan shorelands should lie. 



They ride by 
the hoarse sea, 
and the bitter 
winds and hell 
with them. 



0, that night, and that terrible ride- 



With the bitter, sharp wind in the face, 
And the hoarse, great tongues of the tide, 
As it beat on the black of that place ; 
Till all hell joined in the race. 
With death and despair for a guide! 



He slays the 
foes of his 
guilty thoughts, 
while the 
demons trouble 
him. 



Many the foes that I slew. 

With the sword of my guilt, red as blood — 

Many the demons that blew 

Their mad flame-horns through my mood. 

As I thundered that horrible wood, 

To the place where a world went through. 



THE LAST RIDE 



263 



Now he hates 
the morrows 
to come 



with the 
remorse for 
his wrecked 
davs. 



He knows the 
end cometh. 



They come to 
the outer shore 
and look each 
on each through 
the mists, and 
read the ancient 
curse there, 



and feel the 
dread agony of 
parting. Their 
bouls feel for 
one another as 
the seas for 
(be land. 



White, meagre, the days yet to come 
Seemed wintry and hateful to me : 
Would mornings wake, pitiless, dumb, 
With horror and dread agony — 
And the moan of that terrible sea 
Beat the dead-march of life like a drum 

In the hands of some hideous mime — 
Some strange, inextinguishable flame 
That would burn at my heart for all time — 
Some horror too dread to have name, 
As of one who had played for a game, 
Then slipped and was lost in the slime ? 

(I am but the poor wreck of a man,) 
When I came to that horrible place, 
(Love was never a part of God's plan,) 
And looked her and death in the face, 
And knew me unworthy and base, 
And the shores where the black waters 
ran; — • 

When we came to that lone outer shore. 
Where the world sundered, parting us two ; 
(God and the dread nevermore!) 
When we came where the thick mists blew, 
So face could scarce on face, through, 
Eead the woe-rune of earth's ancient 
lore ; — 

When hand stretched longing for hand. 
And that strange, wild cry of the soul ; 
As the feeble sea feels for the land. 
Or a racer far, far from the goal ; — 
So we, ere we drank of death's dole. 
Knew the black night that hope never 
spanned, 






264 



POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



But he knows 
the hour has 
come. 



and the anguish 
at the gate of 
the nevermore. 



They plead in 
vain with time 
while their 
doom waits. 



Then I knew as I looked on her face, 
(Black, black is the night and the rain,) 
Sweet as a flower in that place. 
And heard the hoarse roar of the main; 
That this was the hour for us twain, 
The last, bitter end of the race. 

And I gripped her as man only grips 
The last gift that God has for him. 
And lived with my lips on her lips 
An age that was anguished and dim ; 
And time was as bubbles that swim. 
Or the hailing of out-faring ships. 

"We pleaded and haggled with time, 
With time who was haggard and hoar; 
And met the dread hell of our crime, 
While fate stood there at the door; — 
With our doom in his hand he upbore. 
Till I heard each second's beat chime. 



He feels that 
they died there. 
He is but a lost 
wreck on the 
coast of the 
ages ere the 
evil had power. 



And dreams a 
dead life with 
but one thing 
real for him 
which he liveth 
over and over 
forever, that 
night and the 
woe that her 
face held. 



And I know now we died in that hour :- 

I am all but the ghost of a man, 

A mariner stranded ashore 

On some continent out of God's plan. 

Made before misery began, 

Or evil got men in its power. 

In dreams my imaginings trace, 
I feel I lived somewhere before. 
Ere life was, in some phantom place, 
Some land of the haunted No More; — 
Bnt, God, that night and that shore. 
And that ride, and the woe of her face ! 



THE VIOLIN 265 



The Violin 



Yea, take all else, my life, or what you will. 

But leave me this. What is it unto you ? 

A few thin shriveled hits of carven wood, 

Time-stained and polished, curved to curious form, 

With strings to scrape on that a man might buy 

For a few farthings. You say 'tis a Cremona? 

'Tis naught to you or others, but to me 

My joy, my life ! Once more my hand grows strong 

To clasp its curves and feel its soul vibrate 

Throughout my being; for, believe me true. 

It is mine other self. Yea, sit and hearken, 

And I will make it speak, yea, sing and sob, 

And weep and laugh and throb its strings along 

The gamut of the passions of this life. 

For here dwell melodies that Mozart played. 

When he would call the angels of heaven down 

Along the golden ladders of his dreams. 

Here sleep those notes vibrate wherewith Beethoven 

Did open up those tragic wells of music. 

And loose the prisoned ministers of sound; 

Wedding them to harmonies such as never 

Before or after, save God or angel, heard. 

Here pulse those magic dances that throb through 

The sensate universe, keeping it in tune. 

Warming the sunlight, bluing the azure of heaven, 

Swaying the tides to harmonies of the moon : — - 

That stir those demon revellers of the deep, 

And charm the rages of those ruined souls 

'Mid horrored wakings of their eternal sleep. 

Hark now the tender melodies of this song. 

It is a charm-song stolen from faeryland, 

Filled brim with spiced melodies of sleep. 



266 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Now 'tis the rest of night, the breathing woods, 
The dewy hush of dawn, the peace of even, 
Or slumber of noon-day, 'tis an infant's breath. 
Till higher, shriller, it strikes the notes of woe, 
The harsh, discordant clangor of human strife : — 
Then, louder, stronger, to the strident note, 
The echoing, vibratant clarion horn. 
Or brazen trumpets, with their blatant throats, 
Bugling along the battlements of the world. — • 
Ah, God ! it breaks in discord, — I have done. 

I am degraded, old, I go in rags ; — 
The children cry at me along the streets; 
Your lords and ladies shudder and scorn me by; 
Your glittering palaces are barred against nie; 
Your power and splendor alien to my life: — 
But what is wealth to him who holds my riches. 
What splendor to the splendors that I draw 
From out this shriveled universe of sound? 

'Tis nothing but a bit of withered wood. 

Cunningly built, and welded into shape. 

With some few strings a groat or so might buy. — 

But when I die I will beg them place it near me, 

Within my coffin, close here to my heart; 

That through the long, lone autumn night of death, 

My spirit may vibrate to its living strings. 

Immortal with the chords that Mozart struck. 

That Paganini played, Beethoven rang. 

And when 1 wake, if ever there be waking. 
Beyond that awful sleep that follows life, — 
My soul will wing to heaven on its strings, 
For did I know, how could I plead with God 
Without its melodies to voice my love. 
And heaven no heaveu without my violin. 



SONGS FROM " MORDRED" 267 

Songs from " Mordred " 

"And Who'd be Wise?" 

Dagonet — 

And who'd be wise 

And full of sighs, 

And care and evil borrow; 

When to be a fool 

Is to go to school 

To Happy-go-luck-to-morrow ? 

Who'd tread the road. 

And feel the goad, 

And bear the sweatsome burden; 

When loves are light, 

And paths are bright 

Of folly's pleasant guerdon? 

Sigh while we may, 

We cannot stay 

The sun, nor hold its shining. 

So joy the nonce, 

We live but once. 

And die for all our pining. 

Who'd be a king 

And wear a ring 

And age his youth with sorrow; 

When to be a fool 

Is to go to school 

To Happy-go-luck-to-morrow ? 



268 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Blue is the Summer Morning's Sky." 

Blue is the summer morning's sky. 
And birds are glad and merry. 
And Anna's eyes are sweet and sly, 
Her cheeks like any cherry; — 
Her lips like dewy rosebuds are 
Upon the gladsome morning. 
She is my love, my heart's glad star, 
In spite of all her scorning. 

So fill the cup of gladness up 
And drink to youth and morning. 
Let sadness go with evening sup, 
I'm hers for all her scorning. 

" Morning Her Face Is " 

Morning her face is. 
Blue seas her eyes, 
All of earth's sweetness 
In their light lies. 
> 

Coral her lips are. 
Red reefs of doom, 
There do Love's ships drive 
Down to their doom. 

There would I shipwreclc. 
Swooning to death. 
Passing to darkness, 
On the winds of her breath. 



SONGS FROM ''MORDRED" 269 

« Love." 

Love, that lights this world. 
Yet leaves us i' the dark; — 

1 led thee to my couch, 

A grave-cloth was thy sark ! 

Love, we would be clothed. 
And thou hast left us stark. 

Lancelot (crazed) sings — 

Once there was a castle hall. 
Fair, fair to see, 

Armored dight, and splendored all. 
Filled with shout o' revelry. 
Came the hosts o' fate and rage 
Thundered on its walls amain. 
Sunken now like ruined age, 
Never laughs its light again. 

1 loved a Queen and she loved me. 
Aye, that were long ago ! 

Come now wrack, come now woe. 
Strike now lightning, beat now snow! 
Memory, I'll ha' none o' thee ! 

Dagonet sings — 

There may be poison in the cup 

But still the foam must cling. 

To keep the strong world's courage up 

Poor fools must laugh and sing; 

With sobs below and smiles above, 

A-masking day by day, 

On trampled, bleeding hopes of love. 

So whirls the world away ! 



270 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

There may be breaking of the heart. 
Though merry laughs the eye. 
Still we poor fools must act our part. 
And laugh, and weep, and die. 
Still must we sportive battles wage, 
With foam of lightsome breath, 
While underneath the currents rage 
And wrecks are churned to death. 

Dagonet sings — 

It rose upon the month o' May, 
When woods were filled with laughter ; 
Came Margery tripping up the way. 
And Jock a-stealing after. 

It rose in Autumn's aiternoon, 
When love was dead and laughter; 
That Jock went striding 'neath the moon. 
And Margery pining after. 



Sonnets 



THE BUILDERS 273 

Our Heritage 

Not all the fire of Burns, the mind of Scott, 
The stern and holy human zeal of Knox, 
Nor that wise lore which human life unlocks 

Of magic Shakespeare, Bacon's subtlest thought. 

Nor Milton's lofty line sublimely wrought, 

Not gentle Wordsworth 'mid his fields and flocks, 
*Nor mystic Coleridge of the wizard locks, 

Hath power to raise us to our loftiest lot: 

But that rare quality, that national dream. 
That lies behind this genius at its core, 
Which gave it vision, utterance ; evermore. 

It will be with us, as those stars that gleam, 
Eternal, hid behind the lights of day, 
A people's best, that may not pass away. 

The Builders 

Each fane we build is i^art of God's great thought. 
One stone in His rare temple thundered down 
In some old wreck of wisdom's past renown. 

So we rebuild, in each gold hour rebought 

From life's dread waste of folly foiled and fraught, 
With falsity, where in her tinsel crown 
Philistia's Queen doth laugh all effort down. 

While Nature's eremites toil and heed her not. 

So we rebuild, till, in some afterday, 

'Mid dreams confused this temple rears its dome. 
To point to men a fairer, gladder way. 

To ease earth's being down to its long home, 
And make life greater for those weary men 
Who toil in trade's mad mart or care's grim fen. 



274 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

The Higher Kinship 

Life is too grim with anxious, eating care 

To cherish what is best. Our souls are scarred 
By daily agonies, and our conscience marred 

By petty tyrannies that waste and wear. 

Why is this human fate so hard to bear? 

Could we but live with hill-lakes silver-starred, 
Or where the eternal silence leaneth toward 

The awful front of nature, waste and bare: 

Then might we, brothers to the lofty thought 

And inward self-communion of her dream. 
Into that closer kin with love be brought, 
Where mighty hills and woods and waters, wan, 
Moon-paved at midnight or godlike at dawn. 
Hold all earth's aspirations in their gleam. 



Nature the Benign 

Nature^ the terrible, cruel, deaf, malign ! 

So men have named her in their vague alarm, 
Who know her outward only. Never harm 

Came to the soul that read her secret sign, 

Lived her pure laws, and dreamed her dream benign, 
That broodeth eternal ever kind and warm. 
With rare imagination's ancient charm, 

Where all her lores and kindred loves entwine. 

Not hers the working of blind woes and ills. 
Unanswered hunger and the futile breath 
Of wasted suffering and unneeded death; — ■ 

Behind the formless mask, the seeming strife, 

Bound by a law as old as her own hills, 

She is a spirit, and her joy is life. 



MY RELIGION 275 

The Soul 

What bears me up ? 'Tis not this earthly frame, 
These vigorous limbs, this solid teeming earth, 
That bore me patient ever since my birth ; 

But something inward, some fierce mystic flame. 

For which our language hath no subtler name 
Than spirit : some dread hidden lamp of life. 
Behind the ego dense, the passions rife, 

That looks far out and dreams from whence it came. 

Those others weaken. Fever, sin, disease. 

The shock of mountains and great toppling seas 

Shatter their being: this that dwells within 
Knows other base of power more secret, dread, 
Drawn forth, eternal, from some fountain-head 

Of power and life, where sense hath never been. 

My Religion 
Let other men to other faiths defer. 



This is my creed, I live by it alone : 
Not unto gods of self or carven stone 

Do I bow down 'mid mists of mind that blur; 

Let myriad schools their myriad truths aver. 
Place Superstition on her ancient throne. 
Or callous Eeason to reign in ice alone ; 

Earth's truth was never taught by her, or her. 

This is my creed, where each man hath his own, 
God is a spirit, love with insight blends, 
Make to thyself earth's rarest, highest friends. 

Truth, wisdom, beauty: let all else alone; — 
Beyond all doubts and dread dogmatic fears. 
These speak for God along His ancient years. 
18 



276 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Toleration 

Toleration for the alien soul. 

Who thinketh different from thy special dream 
Of how earth's freedom widens its pure stream 

To this world's splendid, ultimate, mighty whole : 

Yea, toleration for the one whose goal 

Is equal, though 'tis reached by other ways : 
For other dreams of other hopes and days : 

While over all the same wide heavens roll. — 

But for the tyrant, he who would ensuive: 

Wouldst tolerate the wolf thy child would clutch, 

The eating flame, the rude engulfing wave 

That would destroy thee? Nay, nay, unto such 

The barrier walls, the iron gates that gird. 

The dread denial, the hate, the sanguine sword. 

September 

As ONE who lieth on a bed of death, 

And laiowing in truth that be hath soon to die, 
For months and months in silent dream doth lie, 

And mind grown clear, his whole life pondereth. 

And sees it fade before him like a breath 

That smokes a glass; so thou, hushed month, dost 

dream 
The whole year's memories in thy quiet gleam 

Of inward thought that no speech uttereth. 



II 



Here, haply, musing by thy silent fields. 

Thy ripened woods, thy brown, shorn harvest floors, 
And hazy hillsides, he who seeks may find 

The sort of soul he is, and at thy doors 
Of inward contemplation lend his mind 
To those high reveries nature's heart reveals. 



THE TRUTH 277 

Nature's Truth 

JSTatdee, give me thy trutli, for I am worn 

With outward knowledge of this surface world. 
Men know thy trees, thy hills, thy clouds upcurled. 

Thy dreams at even and thy dews at morn, 

Thy great sky-temples, domed or thunder-torn; 
Thy lakes, thy rivers hushed or seaward hurled, 
Thy limpid brooks, thy grasses dew impearled. 

And all fhy beauty love or wonder born. 

But that rare glory, that invisible. 

Undreamed-of vision of thine under deeps, 
That face behind earth's face that never sleeps, 

That mystic word our wisdom fails to spell, 
Which man calls genius, that sincerity, 
That magic seeing heart, give, give to me. 

The Truth 

Not what is true in this place or in yon, 
But what is truest for the whole world's ill, 
Eolling its stone eternal up its hill, 

Or Ixion-like, stretched fate's grim wheel upon. 

Hungering long o'er opportunity gone; 

Or like blind Samson, grinding his grim mill, 
Crippled and futile; yet with one sweet thrill 

For some old springtime or unrisen dawn; 

That somewhere, sometime, through the fateful years. 
Earth's disappointment and her urgent strife, 
Man's soul might reach some outer door of life; 

And stripped of folly's garb and time's poor fears. 
Grow large and godlike, as those cloud-dreams furled, 
And splendid deeps that drift cJjout the world. 



278 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Life's Inferno 

I STOOD last night on Dante's bridge of woe, 
And saw that awful host of those who pass, 
Like phantom shadows on a wizard's glass, 

In all dread miseries of the stygian throe. 

I saw the fated lovers come and go 
In agony of love's despair, alas, 
Ixion's wheel; and Sisyphus' taunting glass 

Escape his lips amid the hellish glow. 

But nowhere saw I ill so great as here 
Goes grinding sadly, patient day by day. 
Jealousy, hate, yon miser aged and grey 

Gripping his gold with mocking death anear; 
Or that dread dart of all dread woes above, 
Earth's agony of unrequited love. 

Death 

When He who built this magic wizardry 
Of sky and earth and sea and human heart, 
And planning brain and all that holdeth part 

In fleeting joy and quick mortality. 

From azure peak to purpled rim of sea. 
Shall come again, and by His wizard art 
Dissolve the pearl, and bid the guest depart 

From this high house of being's majesty: — 

May He not come as summons shrill at morn. 
Or sudden tempest shaking life's frail tower. 
Or angry black when storms and tempests lower ; 

But soft at even ere the stars be born. 

And love lets down her gradual veils of sleep. 
So my soul pass from splendid deep to deep. 



TRUE INSIGHT 279 

The Consolation of the Stars 

Where white Orion rules the hosts of night, 
And grim Arcturus wheels his ancient round. 
If there be any soul by earth-weight bound. 

Let him here come, and if he hath a blight 

Of poisoned spirit, let him note the flight 

Of those great seers of centuries, without sound, 
Patient, orderly, in their mystic swound. 

Wheeling forever eternal hills of light. 

Let him here pause; and if he hath a care, 
A poisoned arrow rankling in his heart 

Of human sorrow, or ill too great to bear. 
From off his spirit like mists it will depart, 

And in these dreams 'twixt golden dusk and day 

Eebuild his soul for its appointed way. 

True Insight 

They never know who only Icnow alone. 

Who deeply knows must also deeply feel. 

Life is a knife ground on a grinder's wheel, 
A sea-worn crag, a river-polished stone. 
Knowledge for suffering doth to love atone. 

who would not to grim experience kneel. 

And feel the fiat of fate's averted heel, 
To know in truth the great world's under-moan. 

There in her dungeons where her weird mimes flit, 
Behind the curtains of her phantom show. 

With grim reality for aye to sit. 

And watch those puppet-maskers come and go, 

Who build the shadow-dreams that rise and fall. 

Grotesque, distorted, on life's sombre wall. 



280 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

The House Divine 

Not in the caverned aisles of cloistered gloom, 
Or chancelled splendors built in carven stone, 
Where censer smoke goes up and choirs intone 

Those sad dread litanies of human doom, 

That lend an added horror to the tomb ; 

jSTor where the modern dervish maketh moan. 
And smites his forehead with impenitent groan, 

Doth faith's rare flower of reverence wake and 
bloom : 

But out in hallowed halls of dawn or night. 
Where overhead the censer stars outswing, 
Eternity and night in one vast ring, 

Or hid impulses of inmoving light ; 

Behind him all the mystery of his race, 
Doth man with Deity come close face to face. 

"Not Unto Endless Dark" 

Not unto endless dark do we go down, 

Though all the wisdom of wide earth said yea, 
Yet my fond heart would throb eternal nay. 

Night, prophet of morning, wears her starry crown. 

And jewels with hope her murkiest shades that frown. 
Death's doubt is kernelled in each prayer we pray. 
Eternity but night in some vast day 

Of God's far-off red flame of love's reno^vn. 

Not unto endless dark. We may not know 
The distant deeps to which our hopings go. 

The tidal shores where ebbs our fleeting breath : 
But over ill and dread and doubt's fell dart, 
Sweet hope, eternal, holds the human heart. 

And love laughs down the desolate dusks of death. 



NATURE'S SINCERITY 281 

The Wind's Royalty 

This summer day is all one palace rare, 
Builded by architects of life unseen, 
In elfin hours the sun and moon between, 

Up out of quarries of the sea and air, 

And earth's fine essences. Aladdin's were 
But tinsel sheen beside this gloried dream, 
High, sunny-windowed, walled by wood and stream, 

And high, dome-roofed, blue burnished, beyond 
compare. 

Here reigns a king, the happiest known on earth. 
That blithesome monarch mortals call the wind. 

Who roves his galleries wide in vagrant mirth. 
His courtier clouds obedient to his mind; 

Or when he sleeps his sentinel stars are still. 

With ethiop guards o'ertopping some grave hill. 

Nature's Sincerity 

Not by fine straining above our natural powers. 
Or standing tiptoe over greater heads, 
Do we beget that greatness nature weds 

To her sure actions and her patient hours. 

Nor yet by building arrogant Babel towers. 
And aping genius, do we spin those threads 
Of grave existence, which the world besteads 

When fortune fails and life's horizon lowers. 

Not thus doth Nature tread her patient rounds 
In gloom of darkness or in wine of light. 

Flaming the wheel of her slow fixed bounds, 
Eevivif ying day in womb of night : 

Plodding her dream in mists of mightiest powers. 

Working her miracles in her natural hours. 



282 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

The Soul's Cloister 

Amid the mighty struggles of the day, 

The burdened armies of huge toil enlockcd, 
In trade's grim battle-grounds ambition-rocked, 

And busy marts of all the world's loud fray. 

The truer moods of being flee away. 

With all the gentler dreams of life that flocked 
From love's hyperion fields, now cursed and mocked 

By iron mouths and brazen throats that bray. 

But in the hush of those diviner hours. 

The meditative silences of night, 
When Nature reasserts her holier powers, 

And all false dreams and garish take their flight. 
Those rarer moods of dream return to dwell 
'Mid these white towers of truth invisible. 

Earth's Innocence 

Wrap me, kind Nature, in thy fold of dreams, 
Out from this life and its brute-selfishness, 
Its anguished strivings for the boons that bless, 

Its base ambitions and its bauble gleams 

That lure poor souls, like foolish fish in streams, 
From sunbeam into sunbeam ; profitless. 
Make me a part of thine own happiness. 

With which thy realm, honey-nurtured, teems. 

Give me once more thine olden innocence 
Of bird and bee; the sunshine-built romance 

Of hour to hour, by wood and field and deep ; 
Co-heir with those blithe wanderers of thy fields, 
To whom alone life's open-sesame yields, 

Like little children, morning, fiowers and sleep. 



FOUNDATIONS 283 

Love 

The truest is the simplest. Why entail 

Whole days of years to some complex pursuit, 
To probe life's flower and analyze its fruit? 

weary student, perplexed, spectre-pale. 

Why beat against the granite of thy gaol, 

Self-built ; or kill the flower to search the root ? 
Doth lore make mankind any less the brute ? 

Or'knowledge alone for godlike flight avail ? 

'Tis love draws all from earth to heaven's heights. 
Not all thy weary lore of sleepless nights 

Hath power to touch like one low daisied sod; — 
'Tis love, not lore, whatever come to pass. 
We are but child-kin to the birds and grass, — 

And he who yearns, life's heir, and kin to God. 

Foundarions 

We are what nature made us : soon or late. 
Life's art that fadeth passeth slow away. 
With iron eatings of our sordid day. 

Leaving behind those influences, innate. 

Immutable, divine. As round some great, 

Eude, craggy isle, the loud surf's ravening fray 
Shatters all life in spume of thundered spray, 

Leaving huge cliffs, scarred, grim, in naked state: 

So life and all its idols hath its hour, 

Its fleet, ephemeral dream, its passing show. 
Its pomp of fevered hopes that come and go: 

Then stripped of vanity and folly's power, 
Like some wide water bared to moon and star, 
We know ourselves in truth for Avhat we are. 



284 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

The Poet 

He sings and sings ; ye cannot stop his lute ; — 
Hunger and misery, death and man's disdain, 
And all that grieves and gives poor mortals pain, 

Sorrow and shame — these cannot make him mute. 

Brother to days that gather little fruit, 

Shunned by the mob, and scorned of sordid gain. 
He walks his way for love and music fain. 

Loving poor life that song be at its root. 

And when spring eves are red or ozier-pale, 

He wanders where earth's children lisp their tale 

To tender skies whose misty stars look down; — • 
And all love's realms are his, the budding hours 
Of children, brooks and Avinds and grass and flowers, — ■ 

A king whom death alone may dare uncrown. 

The Politician 

Caeven in leathern mask or brazen face, 

AYere I time's sculptor, I would set this man. 
Eetreating from the truth, his hawk-eyes scan 

The platforms of all public thought for place. 

There wriggling with insinuating grace. 
He takes poor hope and effort by the hand. 
And flatters with half-truths and accents bland, 

Till even zeal and earnest love grow base. 

Knowing no right, save power's grim right-of-way; 

No nobleness, save life's ignoble praise; 
No future, save this sordid day to day ; 

He is the curse of these material days : 
Juggling with mighty wrongs and mightier lies. 
This worshipper of Dagon and his flies ! 



THE PATRIOT 285 

Sublimity 

That rarer essence, that which lies behind 
Our truest beauty, light of beauty's core, 
Where all truth rises, font of wisdom's lore, 

Back of all dreams of human heart and mind, 

At life's great well heads where earth's gropings, 
blind, 
Fumble for Deity round their caverned floor. 
As some great water feeling for his door. 

Azure of ocean, where sea-caverns wind: 

So in our nature's far recessional deeps 

It dwells, this greatness, at the heart of things. 
Where wisdom broods with ancient folded wings, 

And all those hid impulses of earth's youth. 

All know this presence sometime 'mid life's ways, 

Only the few who follow love and truth 
Feel earth's sublimity all their human days. 

The Patriot 

Born with a love for truth and liberty. 
And earnest for the public right, he stands 
Like solitary pine in wasted lands, — 

Or some paladin of old legends, he 

Would live that other souls like his be free. 

Not caring for self or pelf or pandering power. 
He thunders incessant, earnest, hour by hour. 

Till some old despot shackle cease to be. 

Not his the gaudy title, nor the place 

Where hungry fingers clutch his country's gold: 
But where the trodden crouch in evil case. 

His cause is theirs, to lighten or to hold; 
His monument, the people's glad acclaim; 
And title high, a love more great than fame. 



286 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



Night 

Home of the pure in heart and tranquil mind, 
Temple of love's white silence, holy Night ; 
Greater than splendid thought or iron might. 

Thy lofty peace unswept by any wind 

Of human sorrow, leaves all care behind. 
Uplifted to the zenith of thy height, 
My world-worn spirit drinks thy calm delight. 

And, chrysalis-like, lets slip its earthly rind. 

The blinded feuds, base passions and fierce guilt. 
Vain pride and falseness that enslaved the day, 
Here dwindle and fade with all that mocks 
and mars ; 
Where wisdom, awed, walks hushed with lips 
that pray, 
'Neath this high minster, dim, invisible, built. 
Vast, walled with deeps of space and roofed 
with stars. 



Job 

In all that olden Israelitish lore 

Whose lofty beauty fills the ages' span, 

'Mid all those mighty souls who being bore, 
There was one man, a king, who lived a man. 

Smitten of heaven, scourged of all earth's woes. 
With love and kinship, wealth forsworn and fled ; 

Stung by those friends, worse ills to men than foes, 
Tormenting where they might have comforted : — 



ON A PICTURE OF COLUMBUS 287 

Stripped of all hopes that common men hold dear, 
Polluted of body, clothed with leprous scars. 
There 'mid his ashes alien from his race. 
He still maintained his being without fear. 
And lifting agonized eyeballs to the stars. 
Did question Deity, naked, face to face. 



On a Picture of Columbus 

Not for one age was it given thee to be ; 
Out-living all in thine immortal span, 
Thou wondrous, titan, godlike minded man; 

Earth's little lives comparable to thee 

As meadow tarns unto the mighty sea ; 

'Mid few great souls, create since time began. 
Thy spirit ever seems to brood and scan, 

Strong, self-contained, time's lone immensity. 

ISTor dread Atlantic did thy purpose daunt: 

Scorning the trackless paths toward ocean's verge, 

Thine eyes sought ever where Hesperides haunt, — 
Thy spirit rode above all weak despair, 

Seeing in visions gleaming coasts emerge 

Out of the Wild and Limitless, waste and bare. 



288 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Shelley 

Spirit of fire and snow and heart all dew, 
Child of the midnight's glory and the stars, 
Whose mad, sweet chanting smote to heaven's bars :- 

Brother, ethereal, to that glorious few 

Who from earth's beauty song's high triumphs drew;- 
Beyond the earthy, like some paler Mars, 
Winging above thine age's petty jars. 

Thy song to heaven meteor-like out-flew. 

First came one great in love's majestic calm. 
The wizard singer of all singing men; 

Then he who sang in high immortal psalm 

That greatest of all love's great, sad rebels. Then 

Thou camest, angel of the starry lyre* 

Raining the dusk with melody of fire. 



Saoas ot IDaster Britain 



CANADA 291 



Britain 



Great patient Titan, 'neath thy wearyincr bad 

Of modern statecraft, human helpfulness ; 
^ To whom do come earth's weak in their distress 

To crave tiiine arm to avert the oppressor's goad : 

Thou sorereignty within thine isled ahode. 

Hated and feared, where thou wouldst only bless, 
By fools who dream thine iron mightiness 

Will crumble in ruin across the world's wide road,— 

Though scattered thy sons o'er leagues of empire's rim 
Alien, remote, by severing wind and tide ;— 

Yet every Briton who knows thy blood in him 
In that dread hour will marshal to thy side-— 

And if thou crumbiest earth's whole frame will' oroan 

(rod help this world, thou wilt not sink alone ' 



Canada 

Thou land for gods, or those of old 
Whom men deemed gods, of loftier mould. 

Sons of the vast, the hills, the sea : 
Masters of earth's humanity : 

I stand here where this autumn morn 
Autumnal garbs thy hills adorn. 

And all thy woodlands flame with fire, 
And glory of the world's desire. 
19 



292 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Ear northward lie thy purple hills, 

Far vasts between, thy great stream fills, 

Ottawa, his fleet tides impearled. 
From deep to deep, adown the world. 

land, by every gift of God 

Brave home of freemen, let thy sod, 

Sacred with blood of hero sires. 
Spurn from its breast ignobler fires. 

' Keep on these shores where beauty reigns, 
And vastness folds from peak to plains. 

With room for all from hills to sea, 
No shackled, helot tyranny. 

Spurn from thy breast the bigot lie. 
The smallness not of earth or sky. 

Breed all thy sons brave stalwart men. 
To meet the world as one to ten. 

Breed all thy daughters mothers true. 
Magic of that glad joy of you, 

Till liberties thy hills adorn 

As wide as thy wide fields of corn. 

Let that brave soul of Britain's race 
That peopled all this vastness, trace 

Its freedoms fought, ideals won. 

Strength built on strength from sire to son. 



TO THE CANADIAN PATRIOT 293 

Till from thy earth-wide hills and seas, 
Thy manhood as thy strength of trees. 

Thy liberty alone compare 

With thy wide winnowed mountain air. 

And round earth's rim thine honor glows, 
Unsullied as thy drifted snows. 



To the Canadian Patriot 

This is the land of the rugged North ; these wide. 
Life-yielding fields, these inland oceans ; these 
Vast rivers moving seaward their wide floods. 
Majestic music: these sky-bounded plains 
And heaven-topping mountains ; these iron shores, 
Facing toward either ocean ; fit home, alone. 
For the indomitable and nobly strong. 

In that dread hour of evil when thy land 

Is rent with strifes and ground with bigotry, 

And all looks dark for honor, and poor Truth 

Walks cloaked in shadow, alien from her marts, 

Go forth alone and view the earth and sky. 

And those eternal waters, moving, vast. 

In endless duty, ever rendering pure 

Those mild or angry airs ; the gladdening sun, 

Eeviving, changing, weaving life from death; 

Those elemental uses nature puts 

Her patient hours to; and then thou shalt know 

A larger vista, glean a greater truth 

Than man has put into his partial creeds 

Of blinded feud and custom. Thou wilt know 

That nature's laws are greater and more sure, 



294 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

More calm, more patient, wise and tolerant, 

Than these poor futile ejfforts of our dream; 

That human life is stronger in its yearning 

Than those blind walls our impotence builds between ; 

And underneath this calloused rind we see, 

As the obedient tides the swaying moon, 

A mightier law the whole wide world obeys. 

And far beyond these mists of human vision 

God's great horizon stands out fixed and sure. 



To the United States 

O THOUSAND years of Britain's pride. 

One hundred of your own, 

Of throbbing fires of liberty 

Bred in your blood and bone ; 

stalwart 'mid the nations 

To-day alone you stand. 

The fate and being of a world 

Within your puissant hand. 

And shall the scale say bloodshed. 

Or shall the word be peace? 

Shall brute and blind and cruel Force 

Eule, or his thunders cease? 

Shall man go back a century, 

And dream an alien dream. 

Of clashing arms, of sabre stroke. 

Of leaguered shore agleam? 

Or shall the world go forward 

To wisdom and surcease 

Of brutal strife, to the higher life 

Of brotherhood and peace? 



RESPONSIBILITY 295 

thousand years of Britain's pride, 

One hundred of your own, 

Child of the greatest mother-stock 

The world hath ever known; 

Who hold within your honor, 

Who keep athwart your pride, 

The hope or wrecking of a world; 

Hold back the bloody tide ! 

Show men that justice, patience. 

Are nobler far than hate. 

You with your million valiant hearts 

Entrenched by each sea-gate. 

You who could hurl the eastern Avorld 

Back into either sea, 

Show, greater far than iron force, 

'Tis peace that rules the free. 

That far from western granite gates 

Old battles' smoke hath blown; 

Thou thousand years of Britain's pride, 

One hundred of your own. 



Responsibility 

Man is not evil when he stands alone, 

'Tis in the aggregate he loses truth, 
And builds him up life's weakness by his ruth. 

Xo single conscience makes its brother moan. 

The slaving toiler withered to the bone, 
The wasting age ere life hath garnered youth, 

J^o single soul hath done this; each and all 

We add a pebble to a mighty wall 
That shuts this worlcl from freedom and God's truth. 



296 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



The Race 

This mighty dream of the race ! 

When, when will it die? 
When the magic of being burns from the blood, 

When the violet fades from the sky, 
When the mother turns from her child. 

When the son his father spurns: — 
And the blood of the mightiest race on earth 

To bloodless water turns. 



The Answer 

They whisper that you are dying. 

Mother of mine and me : 
Like a sick old eagle crying 

Out of the northern sea : 

But we answer, mother, mother. 

Back to thy breast we come, 
We of thy breed and seed and none other 

From the beat of the alien drum. 

Loud was the new world song 

That wooed and beckoned and won ; 

Long was the day, and long 
The roads of water and sun; 

But after the alien dream, 

After the alien tongue ; — 
Sweet to creep to the true, to the old, 

To the love that ever is young. 



ENGLAND 297 



England 

This poem was adapted to music and sung at the Coronation 
Bazaar as a greeting to the Queen as she entered. 

England, England, England, 
Girdled by ocean and skies. 
And the power of a world and the heart of a race, 
^tA a hope that never dies. 

England, England, England, 

Wherever a true heart beats, 
"Wherever the armies of commerce flow. 
Wherever the bugles of conquest blow. 
Wherever the glories of liberty grow, 

'Tis the name that the world repeats. 

And ye, who dwell in the shadow 

Of the century-sculptured piles, 
Where sleep our century-honored dead, 
While the great world thunders overhead. 

And far out, miles on miles, 
Beyond the throb of the mighty town 

The blue Thames dimples and smiles; — 
Not yours alone the glory of old 

Of the splendid thousand years 
Of Britain's might and Britain's right 

And the brunt of British spears; — 
Not yours alone, for the great world round, 

Eeady to dare and do, 
Scot and Celt and ISTorman and Dane, 
With the Northman's sinew and heart and brain. 
And the Northman's courage for blessing or bane. 

Are England's heroes too. 



298 



POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



North and south and cast and west, 

Wherever their triumphs be, 
Their glory goes liomc to the ocenn-girt Tsle, 
Where the lieatlier blooms and the roses smile. 

With the green Isle \inder her lee. 
And if ever the smoke of an alien gun 

Should threaten her iron repose, 

Shoulder to shoulder against the world. 

Face to face with her foes, 
Scot and Celt and Saxon are one 

Where the glory of England goes. 

And we of the newer and vaster West, 

Where the great war-banners are J"urlod, 
And commerce hurries her teeming hosts. 
And the cannon are silent along our coasts; 
Saxon and Gaul, Canadians claim 
A part in the glory and pride and aim 
Of the Empire that girdles the world. 

Yea, England, England, England, 

Wherever the daring heart 
By arctic floe or torrid sand 

Thy heroes play their part ; — 
For as long as conquest holds the earth. 

Or commerce sweeps the sea. 
By orient Jungle or western plain 

Will the Saxon spirit be; 
And whatever the ]ieople that dwell beneath) 

Or whatever the alien tongue. 
Over the freedom and peace of the world 

Is the flag of England flung. 



Till the last great freedom is found. 
And the last great truth be taught. 



r/IIi WORLD-MOTHER 209 

Till the last great deed be done. 
And the last great battle is fought ; 
Till the last great fighter is slain in the last great 
fight, 

And the war-wolf is dead in his den, 
England, breeder of hope and valor and might. 

Iron mother of men. 

Yea, England, England, England, 

Till honor and valor are dead, 
^J'ill the world's great cannons rust. 
Till the world's great hopes are dust, 

Till faith and freedom be fled; 
Till wisdom and justice have passed 

To sleep with those who sleep in the many 
chambered vast. 
Till glory and knowledge are charnelled, dust in 
dust ; 

To all that is best in the world's unrest 
In heart and mind you are wed : — 
While out from the Indian jungle. 
To the far Canadian snows. 
Over the east and over the west, — 
Over the worst and over the best, 
The flag of the world to its winds unfurled, 
The blood-red ensign blows. 

The World-Mother 

(Scotland) 

By crag and lonely moor she stands, 

This mother of half a world's great men. 

And kens them far by sea-wracked lands. 
Or orient jungle or western fen. 



300 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

And far out 'mid the mad turmoil. 

Or where the desert-places keep 
Their lonely hush, her children toil, 

Or wrapt in wide-world honor sleep. 

By Egypt's sands or western wave, 

She kens her latest heroes rest, 
"With Scotland's honor o'er each grave, 
' And Britain's flag above each breast. 

And some at home. — Her mother love 

Keeps crooning windsongs o'er their graves, 

"WTiere Arthur's castle looms above, 
Or Strathy storms or Solway raves. 

Or Lomond unto Nevis bends 
In olden love of clouds and dew ; 

Where Trosach unto Stirling sends 
Greetings that build the years anew. 

Out where her miles of heather sweep. 
Her dust of legend in her breast, 

'Neath aged Dryburgh's aisle and keep. 
Her Wizard Walter takes his rest. 

And her loved ploughman, he of Ayr, 
More loved than any singer loved 

By heart of man amid those rare. 

High souls the world hath tried and proved. 

Whose songs are first to heart and tongue, 
Wherever Scotsmen greet together, 

And, far-out alien scenes among, 

Go mad at the glint of a sprig of heather. 



THE WORLD-MOTHER 301 

And he, her latest wayward child. 

Her Louis of the magic pen, 
Who sleeps by tropic crater piled, 

Far, far, alas, from misted glen; 

Who loved her, knew her, drew her so. 
Beyond all common poet's whim ; — 
In dreams the whaups are calling low, 
• In sooth her heart is woe for him. 

• 

And they, her warriors, greater none 
E'er drew the blade of daring forth ; 

Her Colin* under Indian sun. 

Her Donaldf of the fighting North. 

Or he, her greatest hero, he. 

Who sleeps somewhere by Nilus' sands, 

Grave Gordon, mightiest of those free. 
Great captains of her fighting bands. 

Yea, these and myriad myriads more, 
Who stormed the fort or ploughed the main. 

To free the wave or win the shore. 
She calls in vain, she calls in vain. 

Brave sons of her, far severed wide 

By purpling peak or reeling foam, 
From western ridge or orient side 

She calls them home, she calls them home. 

And far, from east to western sea. 

The answering word comes back to her, 

* Colin Campbell, Hero of Lucknow. 

tSir Donald Mackay, 1st Lord Reay, whose Mackay Dutch 
Regiment was famous in the Thirty Years' War. 



302 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

" Our hands were slack, our hopes were free. 
We answered to the blood astir; 

" The life by Kelpie loch was dull, 

The homeward, slothful work was done, 
We followed where the world was full, 
To dree the weird our fates had spun. 

" We built the brig, we reared the town, 

We spanned the earth with lightning gleam. 
We ploughed, we fought, 'mid smile and frown, 
Where all the world's four corners teem. 

"But under all the surge of life. 
The mad race-fight for mastery, 
Though foremost in the surgent strife. 

Our hearts went back, went back to thee." 

For the Scotsman's speech is wise and slow, 
And the Scotsman's thought it is hard to ken, 

But through all the yearnings of men that go, 
His heart is the heart of the northern glen. 

His song is the song of the windy moor. 

And the humming pipes of the squirling din; 

And his love is the love of the shieling door. 
And the smell of the smoking peat within. 

And nohap how much of the alien blood 

Is crossed with the strain that holds him fast, 

'Mid the world's great ill and the world's great 
good. 
He yearns to the Mother of men at last. 



THE LAZARUS OF EMPIRE 303 

For there is something strong and something true 
In the wind where the sprig of heather is blown ; 

And something great in the blood so blue, 
That makes him stand like a man alone. 

Yea, give him the road and loose him free, 

He sets his teeth to the fiercest blast, 
For there's never a toil in a far eountrie, 
.But a Scotsman tackles it hard and fast. 

He builds their commerce, he sings their songs. 
He weaves their creeds with an iron twist. 

And making of laws or righting of wrongs, 
He grinds it all as the Scotsman's grist. 



Yea, there by crag and moor she stands. 
This mother of half a world's great men, 

And out of the heart of her haunted lands 
She calls her children home again. 

And over the glens and the wild sea floors 
She peers so still as she counts her cost. 

With the whaups low calling over the moors, 
" Woe, woe, for the great ones she hath lost. 



The Lazarus of Empire* 

The Celt, he is proud in his protest. 
The Scot, he is calm in his place. 

For each has a word in the ruling and doom 
Of the empire that honors his race : 



* Written before the Boer War. 



304 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

And the Englishman, dogged and grim, 

Looks the world in the face as he goes, 
And he holds a proud lip, for he sails his own 
ship. 

And he cares not for rivals nor foes; 
But lowest and last, with his areas vast, 

And horizon so servile and tame, 
Sits the poor beggar Colonial 

Who feeds on the crumbs of her fame. 

He knows no place in her councils. 

He holds no part in the word 
That girdles the world with its thunders 

When the fiat of Britain is heard; 
He beats no drums to her battles. 

He gives no triumphs her name. 
But lowest and last, with his areas vast, 

He feeds on the crumbs of her fame. 

How long, how long, the dishonor, 

The servile and suppliant place? 
Are we Britons who batten upon her. 

Or degenerate sons of the race? 
It is souls that make nations, not numbers. 

As our forefathers proved in the past, 
Let us take up the burden of empire. 

Or nail our own flag to the mast. 
Doth she care for us, value us, want us, 

Or are we but pavms in the game; 
Where lowest and last, with our areas vast. 

We feed on the crumbs of her fame? 



SHOW THE WAY, ENGLAND 305 



Show the Way, England * 

Show the way, England ! 
We are your children, 
Pass us not by; — 
Full five million 
Children of Canada 
True as of yore : — 
Blood of your blood and 
Core of your core ; — 
Speak not the treason, 
Write not the lie, 
Bred of the blood of you. 
We are not alien. 
Pass us not by. 

Show the way, England ! 
Not in your ignorance. 
Passing your children 
Over in silence. 
Oblivion hurled; — ■ 
Buying the traitor. 
Lauding the alien. 
Will you build Empire, 
Wide as the world; — 
But by showing your 
Children you love them. 
Know them as kindred. 
Blood of the one blood. 
Where the wide wheelings 
Of Empire are whirled, 

"Written in answer to a poem, "Show the Way, Canada," printed in the 
Lond,on Spectator, 



306 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Show the way, England ! 
We will follow you, 
We, whose fathers were 
Victors with Wellington, 
Masters with Nelson, 
Under the old flag 
That flapped at the Nile; 
We late children 
Of those intrepid. 
Who, scaling the vast-heights. 
Won you, with Wolfe, 
Canada's glorious 
Mile upon mile. 

They, too, our brothers. 
Loyal Canadian, 
Valorous, chivalrous, 
Sons of Montcalm ; — 
They are not alien. 
Speak not the lie. 
They, too, for Britain 
Have died and will die; — 
They are not alien. 
Helot, out-cast. 
But blood of the old blood, 
Norman of William, 
Victors at Hastings, 
Builders of England, 
Heirs of your wonderful, 

Glorious past. 
Ocean or land, for you 
They, too, will stand for you — 
Show the way, England! 




SHOW THE WAY, ENGLAND 307 

Show the way, England ! 
Forward to justice, 
Freedom and right, 
Onward to glory and 
Wisdom's increase. 
We will follow you. 
Sons of the might of you, 
Smokeward to battle 
Or sunward to peace. 

Show the way, England ! 
Not in the bright hour. 
But in the dark hour. 
When the world threatens, 
We are your sons; — 
Kot for the might of you. 
Shelter and right of you, 
Not for the paid-coin, 
Not for your guns ; — 
But that we love you. 
Suckled at breast of you. 
You are our Mother ! 
We are your sons ! 

Show the way, England I 
And in the fated 
Din of the battle. 
Stand you alone; 
Loyal Canadian, 
Sons of the sons of you. 
Back of the guns of you. 
Bone of your bone ; — 
We will stand four-square. 



20 



308 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Eock of the rock of )^oii, 
Eibs of the steel of you ; — • 
Darlvness or light. 
Let the world thunder; — • 
Ere you go under, 
We will follow you, 
Might of your might I 

Not of the alien, 
We of old Scotland, 
We of old England, 
We of old Ireland, 
We of old Normandy, 
We are your sons; — 
We are Canadian, 
Helot to no one. 
Freedom enfranchised 
Heirs of this strand; — 
We of old England, 
We of old Ireland, 
We of old Scotland, 
We of old Normandy — 
Britons, the sons of you. 
Brand of your brand. 

Show the way, England ! 
We are your children, 
In peace or in battle 
To conquer or die; — 
We are not alien, 
Speak not the insult. 
Write not the lie ; — 
We whose fathers were 
Thanes with Great Alfred, 



SHOW THE WAY, ENGLAND 309 

Loyal at Eunnymeade, 
Norman at Hastings, 
Or Scotch at Lucknow; — 
Speak not the treason, 
Write not the lie, 
Blood of the blood of you 
Leaps in reply; — 
Only be true to us, 
Open your heart to us. 
Lead you to danger. 
To glory or night; — 
We will follow you, 
Blood of the blood of you. 
Might of your might ! — 
Show the way, England ! 

Show the way, England ! 
Let that grim master 
Of earth's dread disaster, 
Let the war shadow 
But darken your sun : — 
Trust your child, Canada, 
She will be with you. 
Shoulder to shoulder. 
Gun to your gun: — 
She will reply with you, 
Fight for you. 
Die with you. 
So wide to the world, 
Be the old flag unfurled! 
Show the way, England I 



310 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



The Children 

Out of the vasts of the world, 
From the beat of the alien drum, 

Back from the wanderings far, 
Do the ancient children come. 

Back from the isles of the east. 

Back from the sunset wall : 
Calling Mother, soul of our soul, 

Do the ancient children call. 

Back from the visions of toiling, 
Out from the dreams of gold, 

From the endless striving and yearning 
The children return to the fold. 

Back from the alien roads, 

Of ignis fatuus gleam. 
Back to the mother, back to the home. 

Do the hearts of the children dream. 

There is cry that the race is sinking, 

Breed of the Albion isle, 
That the strong arm sinks, that the sinew 
shrinks. 

And the lie and the cheat beguile ; 

But we are your children. Mother, 

We at your breasts have fed, 
We will not leave you, life of our life. 

Dead of our olden dead. 



THE CHILDREJSi 311 

Gather, as war clouds gather. 

Hordes of the world afar, 
We are the deathless sons of the race, 

Stars of the olden star. 

Sons of the ancient snnrise. 

Children of granite and dew: 
We yet will drink of the dreams on your 
brink. 

Hills of the heather blue. 

Eeckon thy dead, Albion. 

Eeckon thy latest blood, 
Sons of the strong, where the sunlight long 

Floods the round world in its flood: 

Eeckon on us, Albion, 
Let the world's jackals but spring. 

We will be yours while earth endures, 
While earth and the earth-roots cling. 

Strong is the flag, Children, 

Whereunder your breed are born. 
Strong is the love of the dwelling-place. 

And sweet is the homelight's morn : 

But stronger far yet is the race-tie. 
The kinships that kindle and bind, 

And evermore true to the breed and the thew 
Are the sons of the world-old kind. 

Yea, back to the ancient mother 

The earth-wide children yearn, 
^ho fared to achieve, to dream, to glean, 

To wrestle, to build, to learii, 



312 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

But as ashes the vast achievement, 
And weary the hearts that pray, 

When the old blood dreams and the old love 
gleams 
In the hearts of the Far-away. 

Back 'mid the world's wide seething. 

Its witch-pot brew that boils : 
Back from the buying and selling of earth 

From the chaos of battles and toils. 

The hearts of the far-swept children 

To the ancient mother turn. 
When the day breaks, when the hour comes, 

The world will waken and learn. 

Not the one flag, not the two flags, 
But the blood that wakens and stirs : 

The world may claim them, the world may 
name them. 
But the hearts of the race are Hers. 



Briton to Briton : An Appeal 

We have come to the ways, Brothers, 
To the grim considering place; 

And is it to be together. 

Or chaos, and end of the race? 

We of the ancient people, 

We of the lion line; 
Will a shoulder of earthhills hold us apart. 

Or billowy leagues of brine? 



BRITON TO BRITON: AN APPEAL 313 

We of the speech of Shakespeare, 

We of that breed of men 
Who of old in earth's stern battles 

Conquered as one to ten. 

Is our world-wide task eternal ? 

Ever new lands to win? 
Is it trade forever and ever, 

And never a thought of kin? 

Lands to northward and southward, 

Continents east and west. 
Freed by our liberty, genius. 

Where alien peoples are blest ! 

Are we to scatter and scatter, 

Losing our olden dream; 
And all for a curse of commerce and trade, 

An ignis fatuus gleam; 

That men may say the Briton, 

The ancient race holds sway? — 
But who are the rulers in truth, in right. 

And who are the conquered, pray ? 

The vote of the one man conquers 

Under this freedom of ours ; 
And north and south, and east and west, 

Slowly dwindle our powers. 

Lost to our ancient manhood. 

The freedom our fathers had won; 
Conquered slow by the alien vote. 

Under an alien sun. 



314 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Is it evermore business, business, 

On to the end of time? 
Are the markets our only Empire bonds? 

Is sentiment worse than a crime? 

Is the freedom, the faith of Britain, 

To be sold and bartered away. 
That our rulers may hold a spectre of power 

Over millions of acres of clay? 

Are the centuried dreams of a people, 
Co-heirs of high dreaming and worth. 

To be crushed and stifled for harbors 
On alien coasts of the earth? 

Will it ever be business, business, 

Eternal markets to win; 
Trade, and its curse forever. 

And never a thought of kin ; 

While the sons of the race are drifting 

Slowly and surely apart ; 
And the giant soul of a people is crushed 

In the greed of the world's wide mart? 

Canada* 

Are there none to speak and save? 

Canada, my own, my own. 
Erom western peak to eastern wave? 

Canada, my own, my own. 
Are there none to lift and save. 
Must you sink in helot grave. 
Crushed in gyve of thief and knave? 

Canada, my own, my own. 

* Written at a time when the Press of both parties was filled with 
accounts of gross political corruption. 



CANADA 315 

Are there none to wake the dead, 
people unto grossness wed? 

Canada, my own, my own. 
Must this cursed trade go on. 
Franchise but a bartered pawn, 
Freedom, thought and honor gone? 
Heaven strike or send a holier dawn 

To Canada, my own, my own. 

Must the hideous tale be told ? 

Canada, my own, my own. 
Men like puppets bought and sold. 
Freeman's rights for place and gold? 

Canada, my own, my own. 
Must this hideous lie go on ? 
Are we but degenerate spawn 
Of a greater people gone? 

Canada, my shamed, dishonored own. 

Canada, my own, my own. 

Lie in the dust and make your moan. 

Dishonored by those very ones 

Who should have been your truest sons. 

Like ship on surfs that overwhelm. 

With some false captain at the helm, 

Canada, my own, my own. 
Creep in the dust and make your moan ; 
To childish superstitions doomed, 
Or in material greed entombed, 
Your people sleep through sordid years 
Of modern doubts and deeds and fears. 
Lie in the dust and make your moan ; 

Poor Canada, my own, my own. 

wherefore wonder when our life 
Is all one shrunken party strife. 



316 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

When every question of the hour • 
Betrayed to greed of party power, 
"When every voice for truth is stilled, 
Save that which party spake or willed. 
With pandering pulpits, venial press, 
God send redress, God send redress 
To this poor human wilderness, 
A people for high dreamings meant, 
But damned by too much government. 

dream in vain your future power, 

And build in vain your heart's high tower ; 

Canada, my own, my own. 
When you have sold the olden truth. 
That greatness which inspired thy youth, 
And bartered for a sordid gleam 
The light of all your highest dream. 
With all the gross, material strife 
Of godless, money-hungered life, 

Canada, my own, my own; 
Your children, they have dragged you down 
And trampled all your old renown, 
As some base harlot of the town, 

Canada, my own, my own. 

splendid dream of plain and lake. 
When will you from this curse awake. 
And with new-kindled honor take 
Your place with those who guide the helm 
Of Britain's mighty people realm? 
When will you, raised to that regard 
Of self, above the market yard 
Of life's low levels, hold your share 
In Britain's mighty world-wide care? 
Canada, my own, my own ! 



VICTORIA 317 

wide thy lands and wide thy sky, 

Canada, my own, my own ! 
But wider yet the living lie 
That we have lived, my own, my own ! 
Let ns arise from our old graves 
Of self and ill, as o'er the waves 
God's dawn from night, to that which saves, 

Canada, my own, my own; 
Eise and strike the shackles free 
That bind us lip and heart and knee. 
And be what God dreamed we should be, 

Canada, my own, my own. 

Loved Canada, my own ! 



Victoria 

(Jubilee Ode, A.D. 1897) 

With thunder of cannon and far-off roll of drum. 

And martial music blaring forth her glory, 

'Mid miles of thronging millions down each street 

Where all the earth is bound in one heart-lieat. 

The world's great Empire's greatest Queen doth come, 

Borne on one mighty, rocking, earthquake voice 

Wherein all peoples of wide earth rejoice — 

She comes, she comes, to beat of martial drums. 

And pageants blazoning England's ancient story: 

The good, gray Queen whose majesty and worth 

Have lent their radiance to remotest earth; 

While the splendor and might and power of her mighty 

empire bound her; 
And the serried millions, mad with joy, are near her. 
All to love her, none to fear her. 
But nearer far than power, than splendor dearer. 
The surging love of her loved people round her. 



318 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

She comes, she comes, encircled by her people. 
While praise to Heaven peals out from tower and 

steeple. 
Into the great cathedral, hushed and dim, 
With thankful heart and humble, queenly head 
Over the sleep of England's mighty dead, 
To render up her heart's best thoughts to Him, 
The King of kings — ^'mid hush of priestly tread, 
And gloried anthem's solemn pealing hymn. 
The mighty millions, awed, now bow the head. 
Thank Heaven for her simple, noble life. 
Earth's queenliest Empress, mother, daughter, wife! 
Thank Heaven for all she held her dearest own ! 
Forgiveness for the weakness she hath known! 
Blessings on her wise, old widowed head. 
For what her life is now, and what her life hath been, 
Noble mother, wife and Queen! 

Let the mighty organs roll, and the mighty throng 

disperse ! 
She is ours, and we are hers. 
And both are Britain's. Both to Britain's God 
Lift up the heart-felt praise for the might of splendid 

days, 
For the glory that hath been. 

Let the cannon thunder out, and the miles of voices 
shout : — Victoria ! 

Let the bells peal out afar, till the rocket tells the star. 

And the ocean shouts its paean to the thunder-answer- 
ing bar : 

England's glory, Britain's pride, 

Eevered of half a world beside, 

good, gray Queen, Victoria! 



VICTORIA 319 

Daughter of monarclis, mother of kings; 

All her sorrows we have shared. 

All her triumphs they are ours. 

Kind Heaven, that virtue still endowers. 

Be with her, may her path be flowers ; 

Be with her, may her days be spared ! 

Death aloof, with shadowing wings. 

Unto nature's latest hours ! 

Daughter of monarchs, mother of kings. 

good, gray Queen, Victoria! 

Let all feuds of faction die. 

Let all blaring party bugles cease to blow. 

Let insincere and base detraction lie, 

With sore defeat and bitterness, her carping sisters, low, 

In this one supremest hour, 

Day of Britain's ancient power. 

Day of all her golden dower. 

Of victory-towering centuries, tower on tower I 

Let all hatreds be forgot, 

All bitterness be swept away, 

Eemembering only the glory of our lot 

In this century-honoring day ! 

Celt and Scot and Saxon, let us only know, 

A mighty Queen comes to her own at last. 

Her people's love and reverence — as the glow 

Of some splendid western heaven. 

Deepening into richer even, 

Ere it purples to the vast. 

Past the mailed gates of fears. 

The hooded menace of the years. 

Where rang the iron voices rolling on her ears. 

Of royal dreams the requiem and pall ; 

And awful fates of thrones foredoomed to fall; 



320 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Our aged Queen, on this glad day she stands, 
Amid the throbbings of her land's great love. 
Firm in her rule, her faith in God above. 
Earth's golden keys of happiness on her hands. 
splendid life of Britain's splendid days ! 
noble soul, above all blame or praise ! 
fame that will outlast our little fame ! 
long-enduring honor greater than time or death! 
name that will outlive even that immortal name, 
England's more ancient glory, the great Elizabeth ! 

And we, thy loyal subjects far away. 

In these new lands that own thy sceptre's sway. 

Betwixt thy Royal Isle and far Cathay — 

Across the thunder of the western foam, 

good, gray Queen, our hearts go home, go home, 

To thine and thee ! 

We are thine own while empires rise and wane, 

AVe are thine own for blessing or for bane. 

And, come the shock of thundering war again, 

For death or victory! 

Not that we hate our brothers to the south. 
They are our fellows in the speech of mouth, 
They are our wedded kindred, our own blood. 
The same world-evils we and they withstood. 
Our aims are theirs, one common future good — 
Not that we hate them, but that there doth lie 
Within our hearts a golden fealty 
To Britain, Britain, Britain, till the world doth die. 

And him we send thee as our greatest son, 
The people's choice, to whose firm hand is given 
The welfare of our country under heaven; 
No truer son hast thou in all thy coasts. 



VICTORIA 321 

No wiser, kindlier, stronger, Britain boasts. 
Our knightly leader, Norman in his blood. 
But truest Briton in heart and speech and mind. 
Beloved well of all his fellow-kind, 
In statesmanship our nation's highest mood. 
Our silver-tongued and golden-hearted one. 
In every inch and every thought a man. 
Our noblest type, ideal Canadian ! 
Eeceive him, 'mid those, greatest, thou dost own. 
Thy mighty empire-builders, bastioning round thy 
throne. 

England's latest, greatest Queen, 

Greatness more great than all her greatness that hath 

been, 
Under thy sceptre the outmost continents hang. 
And trackless oceans thunder out their surges. 
These are thy realms. Never in earth's old story 
Hath Queen of earthly realm owned such resplendent 

glory, 
Not golden Homer such wondrous kingdoms sang ; 
Eound earth's wide girdle thy mighty empire verges, 
Out-splendoring all prophecy of olden days. 

Thou latest and greatest on that throne whose base 

Withstood the shock of centuries, still withstands 

The lowering hate of Europe's iron bands. 

In thy true keeping shall that sceptre be 

A golden wand of happiness to the free 

Who call thee Queen from outmost sea to sea. 

That throne to them a mighty lighthouse tower, 

A truth-compelling majesty of light 

Blinding the mists of ignorance and night. 

Where round its base throughout the centuries' flight 

Thunder in vain earth's hosts upon its iron power. 



322 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



The Lament for the Chief 

(On the late Duke of Argyll) 

HONE a rie ! hone a rie ! 
Alas, great Cailen lieth now- 
Like stricken pine in Inverie ! 
The galley waits by lone Lochow 
To bear where Kilmun's sleep beguiles 
The mighty chieftain of the isles. 

He sleeps where glen and mountain blur. 
And Caledonia rocks her pine ; 
Who, long and faithful, leal to her, 
Great daughter of his royal line, 
And true to Empire's noblest cause. 
Moulded her wisdom in her laws. 

And o'er the doorways of his rest 
The sign of lineal glory stands. 
The galley of his ancient West, 
To bear his soul to loftier lands. 
Those isles of Scotland's mighty soul 
And splendors of her spirit's goal. 

There he will sleep in lordly dream 
Until the last dread pibroch wakes 
The centuried hush of glen and stream, 
And far by misted hills and lakes, 
Each plaided warrior grimly stands 
At God's dread gathering of the clans. 



THE LAMENT FOR THE CHIEF 323 

There let him dream, as through his sleep. 

Like mists that sweep by Ben Lui, 

Or surge of Jura's mighty deep, 

The armies of the years go by, 

In myriad visions of that vast 

Of Scotland's splendor, Scotland's past. 

Old sounds of far-heard battle call. 
Or mountain-misted shieling sonsr. 
Or warder's call from castle wall 
Of right's high challenge unto wrong; 
Or that old fealty, man to man. 
Of feudal chief and faithful clan. 

Dreams he once more the mighty years 
Of mailed targe and ringing shield, 
Of Scotland's ^sorrow, Scotland's tears. 
For those of fatal Flodden's field ; 
When 'mid mad wreck of Lord and Crown 
All else save honor thundered down. 

Or those old struggles for the right, 
'Mid conquering truth and ancient wrong. 
When Scotland, in her iron might. 
Led forth her bannered hosts alongf. 
In that unconquered spirit, stern. 
Of Douglas, Bruce and Bannockburn. 

hone a rie ! hone a rie ! 

Like mountain mist or drifted snow, 

Through years of Scotland's dream and 

dree. 
The glories of her great dead go : — 
And grief's sad pibroch moans full sore 
The memories of McCailen More. 
21 



324 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Aye, stilled for aye the miglity brain, 
And hushed for aye the magic tongue, 
Whose lofty accents ne'er again 
Will thrill Westminster's Halls among; 
When, first of Britain's barons, he 
Spoke brave for truth and liberty. 

hone a rie ! hone a rie ! 

No more the chieftain's eye shall glow, 

Hushed is his spirit's minstrelsy ; 

The mighty fighter lieth low, 

Who served his country, served his clan, 

And fought to free his brother man. 

And we his kinsmen severed wide, 
Proud heirs of mighty O'Duin's fame. 
By every zone and wind and tide, 
Who bear the ancient, storied name; 
In heart respond to Argyll's woe 
For lofty Cailen lying low. 

We, children of the royal house, 
True to the blood whate'er befall. 
In lineal dreams our hearts arouse, 
Eesponsive to that ancient call. 
By glen and misted mountain brow, — • 
Of Campbell ; and the dread Lochow ! 



MAFEKING 325 



Mafeking 

Mafeking, little Mafeking, the pride of the world goes 
down, 

But thine the splendor of days to come, and honor of 
great renown: 

Little city of Afric wilds, bleak by thine Afric streams, 

Unknown yesterday, to-day thou art great 'mid the 
world's great dreams. 

]\Iany a mighty onslaught, many a victor's sweep 

Of serried charge on chivalrous charge up some world- 
storied steep — 

Many a splendid victory, great in the world's renown ; 

But never a nobler, truer courage than held thee, little 
town! 

Not thine the splendid onslaught, the victory sudden 

won; 
The deed of valor done in a night, or under one glorious 

sun; 
But thine the long, long waiting, the d3ring by slow 

degrees, 
The sad, slow-eating horror of hunger and dread disease ; 
While the foe outside lay waiting, devils in men's 

disguise, 
"With murderous hell of shot and shell, 'neath the 

murderous Afric skies; 
Many a deed of heroes, high in the world may shine. 
But never a deed, Mafeking, truer and greater than 

thine ! 

Town of thy towns, Britain, which is thy greatest? 

Say! 
Is it thy great, grim London, gloried and storied and 

grey? 



326 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Is it thy mighty seaport, crown of thy wealth's great 

crown. 
Whence unto the many ports of the world thy myriad 

ships go down? 
Is it thy northern Athens, city of chivalrous fame, 
With her great learned dead, her sainted tombs, her 

monarchs of deathless name? 
Are these thy glory, Britain? Thy splendors of 

peace are these — 
Marts of thy wonderful wealth of the world, thou mis- 
tress of widespread seas ! 
But nearer than these and dearer to the heart of the 

Empire's pride 
Is the little town of the splendid few where Britons for 

Britain died — 
Yea, greater by far and higher, for story and glory to 

come, 
When the mighty names of the world are writ in the 

books of the thunder of drum. 

Dust, in thy great world city, the dead of thy great past 

sleep : 
Storied and gloried in marble column, and honored of 

those who weep, 
Names of a centuried honor, lives of a world's renown, 
But none of them greater or truer than those who sleep 

in thy little town ! 
Men and women and children, England, these were 

thine ; 
Hearts that knew one duty, to die but never repine ! 
To fight and to suffer for England, for the glory of 

England's name ! 
To fight and suffer and struggle, but never that one 

great shame, 
To yield old England's honor unto the world's wide 
blame ! 



II 



MAFEKING 327 

Weeks, long weeks of waiting, watching for succor to 

come; 
To burrow in earth like rabbits, to wake to the thunder 

of drum; 
Through months, long months, life-eating nights of 

fever and pain. 
Days of watching and hunger borne with a brave 

disdain ; 
Boding disease-racked, deathward, lips firm, fixed to the 

foe. 
To send to the traitor's " Surrender " the Briton's 

thundering " No !" 
To answer them back with their cannon to the last gun's 

last grim round, 
As Britain has answered ever, afloat or greatly aground. 
These be thy soldiers, England ! Care for them, 

honor them, thine! 
Greater than bulwarks of granite or iron, thy bulwarks 

from brine to brine ! 

Months that eked out slowly, as long-drawn miseries 

go; 
Inside hunger and care and pain, outside the angering 

foe; 
With grim death treading daily the streets of the little 

town. 
Where gaunt-eyed sorrow in woman's guise went 

patiently up and down, 
While near in the woman's laager the children's grave- 
yard grew, 
Headstone after headstone, till the toddling feet were 

few; 
And hope deferred grew paler, as under the Afric sky, 
Moment by moment, as drowning men sink, they 

watched their loved ones die. 



328 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

This for thine honor, England; and may thy heroes 

be few 
To suffer the sorrows for thy great sake thy heroes of 

Mafeking knew! 

Bravely, as brave men ever, they bore up day by day, 

Toiling to hold the city's might and the evil foe at bay, 

With the minute gun at morning their sole, dread matin 
bell, 

And the hideous hum of the maiming shot their only 
funeral knell; 

Till after months of slaughter, and famine, hunger and 
pain. 

There broke on their ears the ringing shout of British 
cheers again; 

When bursting through the circling lines in the early 
morning's glow. 

They beat the grim leaguerer back in defeat and con- 
quered the conquering foe. 

Never such mad, wild cheering had the leaguered city 

known; 
Never such laughing and shaking of hands in the streets 

of the little town; 
Never such solemn prayers to God as rose to Heaven 

that day 
From lips of men who pray and fight as Britons fight 

and pray. 
These be thy heroes, England, these be thy brave 

sons, these. 
Greater than bulwarks of granite or iron, thou mistress 

of world-wide seas ; 
These be thy sons who come at thy call where the ends 

of the wide earth meet; 
These be thy sons to conquer and save, but never to 

know defeat. 



OUR BIT OF " THE THIN RED LINE 329 

Town of thy towns, Britain, which is thy greatest? 

Say! 
Is it thy great, grim London, gloried and storied and 

grey? 
Is it thy mighty seaport, crown of thy wealth's great 

crown. 
Whence unto the many ports of the world thy myriad 

ships go down? 
Is it thy northern Athens, city of chivalrous fame. 
With her great learned dead, her sainted tombs, her 

monarchs of deathless name? 
Are these thy glory, Britain? Thy splendors of 

peace are these — 
Marts of thy wonderful wealth of the world, thou mis- 
tress of widespread seas ! 
But nearer than these and dearer to the heart of the 

Empire's pride 
Is the little town of the splendid few where Britons for 

Britain died — 
Yea, greater by far and higher, for story and glory to 

come. 
When the mighty names of the world are writ in the 

books of the thunder of drum. 



Our Bit of " The Thin Red Line " 

They have gone with a people's hopes and 
prayers, 

Out over the eastern brine. 
To strike for the might of Britain's right. 

This bit of " the thin red line." 

And over our loyal land to-night, 

Where the stars of our freedom shine. 



330 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

From all true hearts the prayer goes up 
For our bit of " the thin red line/' 

They have gone to fight the freeman's fight. 

For our far-off kith and kin ; 
Brothers of our own blood and breed, 

In the fight where the right must win: 

For the sacred cause of freedom's laws, 

To win the glad release 
Of those who tread 'neath tyrannies dread, 

And widen the gates of peace. 

We send them forth from our " True North," 

For sacred bond and sign, 
That well or ill, to the great brave end. 

We are Britons from brine to brine; 

And whenever the Lion's hunters are out, 
And danger threatens his lair. 

Be the world on this side, he on that, 
Canadian hearts are there; — 

And stand or fall, though we go to the wall, 

Canadian hearts are true, 
Not only to stand for our own birthland. 

But to die for the Empire too. 

Yea, we send them forth, from our " True 
North," 

Sons of the Empire's might; 
And alien the heart that will not pray 

For our soldier-boys to-night. 

Yea, traitor the heart that takes our bread, 
And drinks our free sunshine, 

That will not throb when the battle joins. 
For our bit of " the thin red line." 



RETURN OF THE TROOPS 331 

Return of the Troops 

(Ottawa, November. 1900) 

Canadian heroes hailing home, 

War-worn and tempest smitten, 
Who circled leagues of rolling foam 

To hold the earth for Britain; 

When rose War's red and angry wraith. 

Duty and death before you ; 
Our pledge to Empire of our faith, 

You went and boldly bore you. 

When late October, loath to die. 

His wintry strain had sung us ; 
You kissed fond lips, and dauntlessly 

Went marching from among us. 

Your moment came ; in letters large 

You retold Britain's story ; 
At Paardeberg's immortal charge 

You wrote our name in glory. 

When sad November's grief doth throw 

His autumn weird upon us, 
You come returning with the glow 

Of all the fame you've won us. 

We hear old Britain praise your name. 

The voice of Empire calling; 
And glory leaps up as the flame 

Of red leaves lately falling j 



332 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

But ! the ones whose breasts are stilled, 
Past all our strife and yearning ; 

Whose hero hearts in earth are hilled, 
For whom is no returning; 

For whom no morrow hath its birth. 

Or chapter of life's story; 
Who sleep far off in alien earth. 

Who died for Britain's glory; 

Who heard the call and bravely rushed 
Where shot and shell were flaming; 

We think of them, and hearts are hushed. 
Amid the wild acclaiming ; 

We think of them, those voiceless ones. 
Whose absence speaks more loudly 

Than all these gleaming ranks of guns 
Of victors marching proudly. 

We think of them, and up along 
The miles of shouting madness, 

The wild, glad surging, jubilant throng, 
A silence goes of sadness. 

Yea, sadness, but exultantly; 

For though in earth beneath us. 
In far-off, alien graves they lie. 

Our dead go marching with us. 

Far, far in London's mighty heart. 
Where life goes blindly thronging, 

Leagues from the homes they loved, apart 
The land of all their longing. 

In marbled columns, side by side, 
Britain — the glory-giver, 



CROWNING OF EMPIRE 333 

With all her mighty dead who died, 
Will write their names forever; 

Great, with the great of victories won 

From Waterloo's red lava, 
To that famed line that thundered on 

To death at Balaclava. 

But here in their own loving north 

Where maples leaves are falling, 
And all the nation's heart goes forth 

Unto her great dead calling; 

Her noble and her gallant sons. 

Beyond our mad to-morrow, 
Will wait the last great matin guns. 

Enshrined in our high sorrow. 

Higher than storied shaft above. 

Than gilded pomp's acclaiming, 
Ennobled in a people's love. 

Past all heroic naming. 



Crowning of Empire 

(Ode written for the Coronation, in June, 1901) 

Thou latest bloom of liberty-loving states, 
Peerless, new-found, thou vast imperial flower. 
Thou dream of patriots, golden possibility. 
As yet untried, unweighed in fortune's balance. 
The hope of few, the wonder of the many. 
Thou splendid pinnacle of human days. 
Whereby earth's aliens linked in speech and blood 
And heart allegiance to one flag, one throne, 



334 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

One common dream of liberty and rule. 

Do come together, one imperial whole, 

In world-wide common amity of blood, 

And equal vision, nursing one high resolve 

Not to be crushed by this ignoble day, 

Where many voices jargon many tongues, 

And hatreds foiled, and superstitions dire. 

Cloaked in poor freedom's many-chequered garb, 

Do crouch and snarl and wait to strike thee down. 

In this auspicious, high imperial June, 

This month of summer yearning to his tide, 

And all divine emotions of the year, 

'Tis meet that in that centre of world-force, 

That arbiter of destinies obscure. 

Where all the glowing, blossoming Junes do meet. 

Of world-ambitions, on whose golden reefs 

Do break the mighty beatings of the world, 

That there from whence her myriad sons went out. 

To build, to fight, to conquer or repel. 

Back to her strength her conquering sons return. 

From all those lands of alien summers and suns. 

Of winters and despairings nobly met, 

Her hosts of children now return once more. 

Her wide imperial hosts, with symbols dear. 

Of silvern links of blood and golden speech. 

To crown her empire when she crowns her king. 

Not mine to praise where many falsely laud, 

And in high-sounding numbers ape the strain 

Of some divine Apollo; rather my task 

Of admonition to those, loyal, who read 

Impending danger yet are wisely strong ; 

Wlio in the sunlight know the black'ning storm, 

And build the safety 'gainst the coming ill. 



CROWNING OF EMPIRE 335 

Yea, would I rather raise prophetic voice, 

Amid this majesty and high acclaim, 

This vast supreme laudation of a world. 

To warn this greatness 'gainst her possible doom. 

Lest tranced in dreams of far, earth-circling rule. 

Her very vastness, wide, imperial power. 

Do house a frailty that may thrust her down. 

Crushed in ruin wide by her immense 

Titan-like shoulders, whereon heavy, outspread, 

God-like Responsibility ever broods, 

Pondering on the miseries of this world. 

Iron- welded, my people, Saxon, Celt, 

Victorious Northmen, strenuous, masterful. 

Not to be strangled in time's ocean flood. 

Sucked down in vortex of old ruin dire. 

But to remain, contend, depose and rule. 

Till earth's white morn outflames her latest night. 

And freedom breaks in gold about the world. 

This thine old spirit, mighty, undismayed, 
High, self-sustaining, individual, free, 
Protesting ever, fronting creeds of dark. 
Denouncing ever the old despotic lie. 
Pending the veils of doubt 'twixt God and man, 
Eeading the morning in the ancient stars. 
And the mind's vastness in the spirit's wars. 

From London's smoke of commerce blackening do^vn, 
Her mighty abbeys and her centuried town. 
Her million toilers and her master minds. 
Her fleets of commerce swept to every wind, 
Whence went her myriads who in shores remote 
Eebuilt her greatness, echoed her vast heart. 
World-throbbing in its grim immensity, 



336 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

To mighty vasts of lone Australian wilds 
And bleak Canadian woods, the cradles grira 
Of Saxon iron and of Celtic gold; 
Out round the world where'er blue ocean breaks, 
'Mid temperate climes or fevered tropic lands, 
Or Arctic wastes, her strong, indomitable sons 
Do crush defeat and make this earth their own, 
Determining all, moulding the world's best dream 
Of strife and life and liberty of man. 

From where soft-lipped, blue Mediterranean laves 

In summer ripples Mediterranean strands, 

To where iron-bound, fog-mantled Labrador 

Juts out to lonely, lost Atlantean glooms, 

The iron glove of empire, tempered, firm, 

Doth hold in grasp the welfare of the world. 

Quebec, Gibraltar, herculean gates. 

Grim portals each of old and new world power, 

Anchors of that vastness of her dream, 

Eeaching round the wide-ribbed, shouldered earth. 

The shining ocean and the desert's span, 

A power peace-yearning, glad, beneficent. 

This younger Eome of this imperial day, 

Beaconing liberty, conquering to redeem. 

This her sole dream, look that she lose it not. 
As tranced in toil, heavily-wheeled, she turns 
Like some vast planet on its cloudward wing, 
Callous of danger, strong in high resolve. 
Half conscious of her might, fulfilling good, 
Unto the conquering ultimate of her end. 
Yea, not to praise, but rather to arraign, 
Lest she in folly let her dream lie down. 
And all her ancient, mighty power depart. 
And all her majesty of light become 
A ruined furnace from whose smouldering gleam 



CROWNING OF EMPIRE 337 

The younger nations haply steal a spark 

To light their lesser, late decadent fires 

Of national ardors : lest in her too credulous, 

O'ermastering love of human liberty, 

She let the evil in in guise of good, 

The tyrant 'neath her freedom nurse his power 

And suckle the serpent at her loyalty's breasts. 

That ancient enemy of all her days. 

To use her liberty to strike her down; 

Lest she, forgetting how the fathers fought 

And strove and lived and died for her great cause. 

And in her dream of madness compromise 

Her truth, her light, for fancied rule and power, 

Where no power lies, no loyalty, but a cloak. 

False and cunning, covering subtlest dream 

To rise and rend her doth a danger come; 

Lest she in all this greatness on her laid. 
This earth-wide, vast, imperial mantle, stained 
With blood of those who loved her, gave her all, 
Not recking save that they did love her, died 
That she might live, and spread that mantle vast 
To outmost rim of despot-burdened earth : 
Lest she 'mid all this pageant, glad, forget 
Her one high dream: her steadfast sons forget, 
On whom alone, in that inevitable hour, 
Which comes alike to nations and to men. 
True Britons, loyal, she may place her trust. 

This my note in this imperial hour, 
This high, auspicious, world-compelling day; 
When cohorts from earth's alien peoples meet. 
And East greets West in challenge, high, of power. 
And all the world-wide splendor gathered far. 
In tribute meet to earth's imperial king. 



338 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Yea, this my note, remembering empire's bounds 
Not larger than the loyalty that upholds ; 
Not wider than the speech that makes us one; 
Not greater than the pride of olden dreams, 
Of common blood, of common faith and song. 

For vain the splendor and the freedom vast, 
And vain the iron power that makes it sure. 
And vain the mighty toil that would endure 
If love be not the anchor that withstands. 

For earth is worn of conquest-sanguined states. 
And bloody wars for base, material ends, 
Of blatant voices calling unto strife : 
Only the calm and patient will remain. 
Only the noble effort will endure. 

And he. Imperial Edward, august son 

Of her who, gracious, noble, held so long 

Her people's fealty : he who stands for all 

This vast, earth-circling rule, beneficent, 

This power that makes for freedom round the worldj 

Whose rule is one with those wise, ancient laws 

Of mighty Alfred ; that rare golden speech 

Of Shakespeare made immortal, liberty 

Loved of Scot and Saxon where'er wide 

Love's golden bonds of kinship gird the world: — ■ 

Yea, he, our august monarch, may his rule 

Be splendid, fruitful, may his days be spared 

To golden out to mellowed olden age 

To rule us happy, with his noble Queen. 

And we, true steadfast Britons, severed wide, 
Where ever Orient skies, hyperion star 
Shine on the mighty pulsings of the world, 
Keep we the loyalty to our speech and blood. 
Brother with brother, kindred peoples set 
About the base of one imperial throne. 



Xafte XprtcB 



VAPOR AND BLUE 341 



Vapor and Blue 

Domed with the azure of heaven, 
Floored with a pavement of pearl, 

Clothed all about with a brightness 
Soft as the eyes of a girl, 

Girt with a magical girdle, 

Eimmed with a vapor of rest — 
These are the inland waters, 

These are the lakes of the west. 

"Voices of slumberous music. 

Spirits of mist and of flame, 
Moonlit memories left here 

By gods who long ago came, 

And vanishing left but an echo 

In silence of moon-dim caves, 
Where haze-wrapt the August night slumbers. 

Or the wild heart of October raves. 

Here where the jewels of nature 
Are set in the light of God's smile. 

Far from the world's wild throbbing, 
I will stay me and rest me awhile. 

And store in my heart old music. 

Melodies gathered and sung 
By the genies of love and of beauty 

When the heart of the world was young. 



342 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 



The Children of the Foam 

Out forever and forever, 

Where our tresses glint and shiver 

On the icy moonlit air; 
Come we from a land of gloaming. 
Children lost, forever homing, 

Never, never reaching there; 
Eide we, ride we, ever faster. 
Driven by our demon master. 

The wild wind in his despair. 
Eide we, ride we, ever home, 
Wan, white children of the foam. 

In the wild October dawning. 
When the heaven's angry awning 

Leans to lakeward, bleak and drear; 
And along the black, wet ledges, 
Under icy, caverned edges. 

Breaks the lake in maddened fear; 
And the woods in shore are moaning; 
Then you hear our weird intoning. 

Mad, late children of the year; 
Eide we, ride we, ever home. 
Lost, white children of the foam. 

All grey day, the black sky under. 
Where the beaches moan and thunder. 

Where the breakers spume and comb. 
You may hear our riding, riding. 
You may hear our voices chiding. 

Under glimmer, under gloam; 
Like a far-off infant wailing. 




THE CHILDREN OF THE FOAM 343 

You may hear our hailing, hailing, 

For the voices of our home; 
Eide we, ride we, ever home. 
Haunted children of the foam. 

And at midnight, when the glimmer 
Of the moon grows dank and dimmer. 

Then we lift our gleaming eyes ; 
Then you see our white arms tossing. 
Our wan breasts the moon embossing, 

Under gloom of lake and skies; 
You may hear our mournful chanting, 
And our voices haunting, haunting. 

Through the night's mad melodies; 
Eiding, riding, ever home, 
Wild, white children of the foam, 

There, forever and forever. 
Will no demon-hate dissever 

Peace and sleep and rest and dream; 
There is neither fear nor fret there 
When the tired children get there. 

Only dews and pallid beam 
Fall in gentle peace and sadness 
Over long surcease of madness. 

From hushed skies that gleam and gleam: 
In the longed-for, sought-for home 
Of the children of the foam. 

There the streets are hushed and restful. 
And of dreams is every breast full, 

With the sleep that tired eyes wear; 
There the city hath long quiet 
From the madness and the riot. 

From the failing hearts of care; 



344 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Balm of peacefulness ingliding, 
Dream we through our riding, riding. 

As we homeward, homeward fare; 
Eiding, riding, ever home. 
Wild, white children of the foam. 

Under pallid moonlight beaming. 
Under stars of midnight gleaming. 

And the ebon arch of night ; 
Eound the rosy edge of morning. 
You may hear our distant horning. 

You may mark our phantom flight ; 
Eiding, riding, ever faster. 
Driven by our demon master. 

Under darkness, under light; 
Eide we, ride we, ever home. 
Wild, white children of the foam. 



How One Winter Came in the Lake Region 

For weeks and weeks the autumn world stood still, 

Clothed in the shadow of a smolcy haze; 
The fields were dead, the wind had lost its will. 
And all the lands were hushed by wood and hill. 
In those grey, withered days. 

Behind a mist the blear sun rose and set, 
At night the moon would nestle in a cloud; 

The fisherman, a ghost, did cast his net ; 

The lake its shores forgot to chafe and fret. 
And hushed its caverns loud. 

Far in the smoky woods the birds were mute, 
Save that from blackened tree a jay would 
scream. 



ON THE SHORE 346 

Or far in swamps the lizard's lonesome lute 
Would pipe in thirst, or by some gnarled root 
The tree-toad trilled his dream. 

From day to day still hushed the season's mood, 
The streams stayed in their runnels shrunk and 
dry; 
Suns rose aghast by wave and shore and wood. 
And all the world, with ominous silence, stood 
In weird expectancy : 

When one strange night the sun like blood went 
down, 
Flooding the heavens in a ruddy hue ; 
Eed grew the lake, the sere fields parched and 

brown, 
Eed grew the marshes where the creeks stole down. 
But never a wind-breath blew. 

That night I felt the winter in my veins, 

A joyous tremor of the icy glow; 
And woke to hear the north's wild vibrant strains, 
While far and wide, by withered woods and plains, 

Fast fell the driving snow. 

On the Shore 

(Age) 

With golden spicM dreams blows in the dawn, 
About the cool blue bosom of the lake; 
Far over wave and shore wild voices wake. 

The watery curves and windy reeds upon, 

Where the young glory of the day dreams on; 
And winged creatures haunts of sleep forsake. 
And dreams and silence their dim ways betake 

Eound the grey edge where lidded night hath gone. 



J 

346 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Here all is young and glad, the laughing shore, 
The sunshine, the glad birds, no memories 
On haggard faces wistful to forget ; 
Save yon old man beside the rude hut door, 
With palsied hands, chin bending to his knees. 
Mending dead youth in meshes of a net. 



The Winter Lakes 

Out in a world of death far to the northward lying, 
Under the sun and the moon, under the dusk and the 
day; 
Under the glimmer of stars and the purple of sunsets 

dying, 
Wan and waste and white, stretch the great lakes 
away. 

Never a bud of spring, never a laugh of summer, 

Never a dream of love, never a song of bird ; 
But only the silence and white, the shores that grow 
chiller and dumber, 
Wherever the ice winds sob, and the griefs of winter 
are heard. 

Crags that are black and wet out of the grey lake 
looming. 
Under the sunset's flush and the pallid, faint glimmer 
of dawn; 
Shadowy, ghost-like shores, where midnight surfs are 
booming 
Thunders of wintry woe over the spaces wan. 

Lands that loom like spectres, whited regions of winter. 
Wastes of desolate woods, deserts of water and shore ; 



1 



A LAKE MEMORY 347 

A world of winter and death, within these regions who 
enter. 

Lost to summer and life, go to return no more. 
Moons that glimmer above, waters that lie white under. 

Miles and miles of lake far out under the night; 
Foaming crests of waves, surfs that shoreward thunder, 

Shadowy shapes that flee, haunting the spaces white. 

Lonely hidden bays, moon-lit, ice-rimmed, winding, 
Fringed by forests and crags, haunted by shadowy 
shores ; 
Hushed from the outward strife, where the mighty surf 
is grinding 
Death and hate on the rocks, as sandward and land- 
ward it roars. 



A Lake Memory 

The lake comes throbbing in with voice of pain 
Across these flats, athwart the sunset's glow ; 

I see her face, I know her voice again, 
Her lips, her breath, God, as long ago. 

To live the sweet past over I would fain. 

As lives the day in the red sunset's fire. 
That all these wild, wan marslilands now would stain, 

With the dawn's memories, loves and flushed desire. 

I call her back across the vanished years, 

Nor vain — a white-armed phantom fills her place; 

Its eyes the wind-blown sunset fires, its tears 
This rain of spray that blows about my face. 



348 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

The Flight of the Gulls 

Out over the spaces, 
The sunny, blue places. 

Of water and sky; 
Where day on day merges 

In nights that reel by; 
Through calms and through surges, 
Through stormings and lulls, 
0, follow, 

Follow, 
The flight of the gulls. 

With wheeling and reeling, 
With skimming and stealing. 

We wing with the wind. 
Out over the heaving 
Of grey waters, leaving 

The lands far behind, 
And dipping ships' hulls. 
0, follow, 

Follow, 
The flight of the gulls. 

Up over the thunder 
Of reefs that lie under. 

And dead sailors' graves; 
Like snowflakes in summer. 
Like blossoms in winter. 

We float on the waves. 
And the shore-tide that pulls. 
0, follow, 

Follow, 
The flight of the gulls. 



now SPRING CAME 349 

iWould you know the wild vastness 
Of the lakes in their fastness. 

Their heaven's blue span; 
Then come to this region, 

From the dwellings of man. 
Leave the life-care behind you, 
That nature annuls, 
And follow. 

Follow, 
The flight of the gulls. 



How Spring Came 

(To the Letke Region) 

No PASSIONATE cry came over the desolate places, 
No answering call from iron-bound land to land; 

But dawns and sunsets fell on mute, dead faces, 
And noon and night death crept from strand to 
strand. 

Till love breathed out across the wasted reaches, 
And dipped in rosy dawns from desolate deeps; 

And woke with mystic songs the sullen beaches. 

And flamed to life the pale, mute, death-like sleeps. 

Then the warm south, with amorous breath inblowing, 
Breathed soft o'er breast of wrinkled lake and mere; 

And faces white from scorn of the north's snowing, 
Now rosier grew to greet the kindling year. 



350 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Lake Huron 

(October) 

Miles and miles of lake and forest. 
Miles and miles of sky and mist, 

Marsh and shoreland where the rushes 
Eustle, wind and water kissed ; 

Where the lake's great face is driving, 
Driving, drifting into mist. 

Miles and miles of crimson glories, 
Autumn's wondrous fires ablaze ; 

Miles of shoreland red and golden. 
Drifting into dream and haze; 

Dreaming where the woods and vapors 
Melt in myriad misty ways. 

Miles and miles of lake and forest, 
Miles and miles of sky and mist; 

Wild birds calling where the rushes 
Eustle, wind and water kissed ; 

Where the lake's great face is driving. 
Driving, drifting into mist. 

Sunset, Lake Huron 

(September) 

The sunbeams fall in golden flakes, 

Like snow-banks flamed the clouds are furled; 

The soft light shakes 

On wave that breaks 

On wave, far round the gleaming world. 



SUNSET, LAKE HURON 351 

Great brown, bare rocks, wet, purple dyed, 
By sunsets' beams, hedge in this realm 

Of sky and wide, 

Bleak sweep of tide, 

Grey, tossed, scarce-plowed by keel or helm. 

The east looms dark, the red day dips 
Down under gleaming rock and wave, 

Tn hushed eclipse, 

Wliile grey night slips 

The cerements of her shrouded grave. 

And buildeth up her arches dark, 

From ruins of the dim dead day, 
Till earth may mark 
Each luminous spark, 

Of stars that far in heaven stray. 

And weaveth with her phantom hands 

(Blind, dumb, save for the moon's white wreath, 

And rude wind bands 

From Eblis lands) 

A shroud for the great lake beneath; 

That beats and moans, a prisoned thing, 

Eock-manacled beneath the night; 
Arid tells each shore. 
Forever more 

Its sorrow in the pallid light. 



352 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Nama-Way-Qua-Donk — ^The Bay of Sturgeons 

(Written in Boyhood) 

Commonly known as Colpoy's Bay, an arm of the Georgian Bay. 
This is a beautiful sheet of water, nine miles long, surrounded by 
lofty cliffs of limestone, crowned by forests, once the haunt of a 
tribe of Indians called Petons, or " Tobacco Indians." 

Medwayosh is a word of Ojibway origin, resembling the sound 
of the waves beating or washing on the shore. 

Cold in the autumn night — 
Sleeping with its waters bright, 
Gilded by the moon's pale light. 
Stretching to the northward white — 
Eests the Bay of Sturgeons. 

Huddled round it, sleeping soft. 
Looming their great forms aloft 
In the moonlight; 

Bearded, grey, the great rocks stand 
Silent, hushed, on either hand, 
As if some dusky warrior band. 
To-night, hushed, from the spirit land, 
Came back once more. 

Gliding here on either shore. 
Lingering near the haunts of yore, 
But to hear the waves once more 
As in nights long, long before. 
Whisper: Medwayosh. 

Towering stern, each blanket round. 

Have the silent ages wound. 

As they watched above each mound. 



THE BAY OF STURGEONS 363 

O'er the grave or battle-ground, 
Where each warrior sleeps. 



Once by these shores these warriors played. 
Here lover bronzed and maiden strayed, 
And as they parted coyly stayed 
To plight their troth. 

And oft when summer moons were young, 
When swaying branches murmuring hung. 
Whispered their loves in unknown tongue. 
Oft in the autumn harvest feast, 
Through purple mists from out the east. 
They watched old Gheezis golden-lieeced. 
Rise o'er the forest. 

Here many a warrior sleeps below, 
His place of rest full well they know, 
Marked where the midday's glorious glow 
Turns to the west. 

The world of men may burn and bum. 
But in these dreamy walls of fern, 
Swathed in deep rest, they never turn. 

Through the dim ages soft they sleep, 
Wrapt in calm slumber, long and deep, 
While Nepenthean dews their eyelids steep. 

A wild, strange banquet long ago, 
Whose lamps, in midst of festive glow 
And mirthful sounds, burnt sudden low. 

sunsets old, long wandered down; 
ancient Indian shore and town. 



354 POEMS OF WILFRED CAMPBELL 

Time's strange dark roll hath wrapt around 
Thy dreamless sleep. 

saddest picture of a race — 

A wild and passionate broken race — 

That melting nightward leaves no trace, 

N"o camp-fire on the sweet, loved face 

Of their own land; 

As shades that wander to their rest, 

Toward those dim regions of the west 

And setting sun. 



No wonder that in sternest close 
The last wild war-cry weirdly rose. 
To break the settler's short repose 
In midnight hour. 

Sleep, sleep, by dreamy bank and stream; 
Sleep through the dim year's afternoon ; 
Let no strange babblers break thy dream. 
No softer, weaker voices wean 



Thee from thy rest, I 



Sleep, sleep, by dreamy snore and glen; 
Sleep on through murk, and mist, and moon. 
Through the mad years of modern men. 
While only dreams of cave and fen 
Fill each wild breast. 



314-77 -7 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 

Cranberry Townshipj PA 16066 

(724) 779-2111 ^ 



